Smoke and Mirrors
by Kezhke
Summary: When an away mission goes awry, B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim are thrown back to the Alpha Quadrant – but home isn't the place they remember it to be.
1. Chapter 1

**Smoke and Mirrors  
By Kezhke**

Disclaimer: Star Trek and its characters are the property of Viacom/Paramount/CBS, and I am just borrowing them for fun, not profit.

Synopsis: When an away mission goes awry, B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim are thrown back to the Alpha Quadrant – but home isn't the place they remember it to be. Set between the "Year of Hell" that wasn't and "Random Thoughts."

Notes: This story follows "In a Mirror, Darkly" (ENT), "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS), "Crossover" (DS9), "Through the Looking Glass" (DS9), "Shattered Mirror" (DS9), and "Resurrection" (DS9). You will be able to read this if you haven't seen those episodes.

If you aren't at all familiar with the mirror universe, I offer a caveat. There are a few rules to the mirror universe that don't match our own: the low guy on the totem pole gets to be the hero, the hero can be killed (or, worse, be a loser), and violence is a way of life.

Books aren't canon.

Pairings: A few, but none of them in *our* universe!

Spoilers: Caretaker, Emanations, Dreadnought, Deadlock, The Thaw, Basics, The Chute, Scientific Method, Muse

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres was struggling to stay in the pilot's seat of the shuttlecraft Sacajawea as it pitched violently in the ion turbulence. _Ions,_ she thought dryly as she gripped the console with her left hand and pulled herself back into the chair. _Charged particles. Not like hurricane-force winds, but_ – she paused in her reflection to stab a button that would increase power to the inertial dampers – _certainly feels like it in type-12 shuttle._

An automatic red alert sounded, and B'Elanna looked at the readouts in front of her with dismay. The attitude stabilizers had gone out, leaving the computer mind of the shuttle with no sense of "up" or "down" in the vast vacuum of space. But with the artificial gravity plating inside the shuttle still functioning, B'Elanna was quite aware of her sense of "up," and when the shuttle tipped abruptly forward, pushing its way through space by its roof, she once again stabbed at the inertial damper controls, lest her two Klingon stomachs both become queasy.

It was time to admit the mission wasn't going as planned.

"Sacajawea to Voyager," she called over the comm. "We've hit an ion storm. We've lost power to the warp drive, and I'm losing control of the thrusters." She spun quickly in her chair. "Harry! I need you up here!"

Ensign Harry Kim stumbled, rather than walked, from the aft of the shuttle to the copilot's seat, into which he fell heavily. "Bad news," he said glumly. "The dilithium's fractured from all this rocking."

"Damn it! We spent six hours collecting it!"

"I don't think that's the worst of our problems," Harry said with slight trepidation.

B'Elanna looked at him, but he was pointing at something on the sensor display. "What?" she prompted curtly.

"Our ion storm," he called over the din of the red alert and the rising sound of the hull quaking. "It's not a storm at all." His tan fingers punched a few controls while B'Elanna awaited an answer, rather impatiently. "I'm reading some kind of displacement wave heading toward us."

"It's not related to a coherent tetryon beam, is it?" Her voice carried equal parts humor and dread.

"The good news is no. The bad news, I don't know what it is."

The shuttle rocked violently, being pushed back in the direction from which it came, and this time the inertial dampers weren't able to keep up. Harry and B'Elanna were thrown from their seats. Harry's head struck the bulkhead behind the copilot's seat, rendering him unconscious before his body crumpled to the floor. B'Elanna watched in shock, but as she tried to crawl to her crewmate, the shuttle once again rocked, and she slid helplessly across the floor toward the rear cabin.

* * *

"Where are we?" Harry's voice was groggy, his mouth thick and dry.

"We're still in the shuttle."

Harry slowly opened his eyes and realized he was lying atop the storage compartment, where B'Elanna must have moved him to rest. He sat upright slowly and took a moment to collect himself.

B'Elanna looked over her shoulder at him. "You hit your head. I was knocked out right after you, but I came to about five minutes ago."

Harry rubbed the back of his head, feeling an egg-shaped reminder of the incident. "No, I meant, what's our position? How far are we from Voyager?"

"The good news is that we don't have to worry about being lost in space anymore," she replied, mimicking his earlier sardonic delivery. "The bad news is that we're sixty thousand light-years from our last position."

"From what I can tell, we're nearly back where Voyager got lost in the first place," Harry said. "But how is that even possible?"

* * *

"I was only kidding when I suggested that the displacement wave was from the Caretaker, Harry," B'Elanna scolded lightly.

"Well, here we are, right along the Bajoran-Cardassian border." He pointed at the sensor display in front of him, which he'd overlaid with a star chart of known territories from the database.

B'Elanna leaned over his shoulder to take a look. "Greeeaaat." She sighed. "Well, we might as well contact the Bajorans. I can't imagine the Federation's gone to war with _them_ since we left. Maybe we can make our way to Deep Space Nine."

Harry looked down at the display. "We've got a ship on sensors. It's about a light-year away and closing fast." He looked up. "It's Cardassian."

"I'm not talking to any Cardassians," B'Elanna said definitively, crossing her arms over her chest.

"B'Elanna, we don't really have a choice," Harry pointed out. "They're hailing us, and we're supposed to be allies."

"I don't care. I can't deal with Cardassians."

"If we're really back in the Alpha Quadrant, you're going to have to deal with them." His console beeped three times. "They're hailing us again. We have to respond."

"You respond," she said, swiftly rising from her seat.

"Where are you going?" he called as she retreated to the rear of the cabin. B'Elanna was one of his closest friends, but sometimes Harry just couldn't fathom how utterly stubborn she could be – and how unwilling she sometimes was to step outside her comfort zone. He sighed and activated the comm. "I'm Ensign Harry Kim of the starship Voyager," he began, but the face staring back at him across the comm made him stop cold. "_Seska?_"

"How do you know my name?"

"Because…because…what are you doing here? I thought you were with the Kazon!" He paused. _I thought you were dead_, he really wanted to say, but he somehow didn't think he ought to reveal that.

"Who are the Kazon?" she asked impatiently. "Stand down. You are outside Terran space. Prepare to have your shuttle impounded. We're taking you to Terok Nor." The comm went dead.

He felt a slight lurch as the shuttle was pulled alongside the Cardassian ship. "B'Elanna!" he called to his friend. "You're not going to believe this."

B'Elanna emerged from the cargo hold, having verified that the dilithium they'd spent hours collecting was, indeed, worthless. "Let me guess," she said crankily. "They told you to get out of their space."

"No, B'Elanna," Harry tried to explain, but she stormed to the front of the cabin and cut him off.

"Are they _tractoring_ us? How dare they!"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Harry said with annoyance. "And the Cardassian who commed us…B'Elanna, it was Seska."

Her eyes widened. "What?"

"She said she was taking us to…" He tried to remember what Seska had said. "Terok Nor."

"That's what the Cardassians called Deep Space Nine," B'Elanna said, taking the pilot's seat again. She called up the menu for the phaser banks, but Harry grabbed her hand before she could power them up. "We have to disengage their tractor beam, Harry."

"If we fire on them, we could be starting another war between the Federation and the Cardassians."

"If the Federation still had any power, the Cardassians wouldn't have taken the station back," she pointed out. "I think it's safe to assume something has gone very, very wrong since we left. We need to get away from them so we can figure out what's going on. Just let me disrupt their beam."

"But what if they fire back?" he argued. "Look at the size of that ship. I'm sure they outgun us."

B'Elanna's eyes narrowed for a moment, indicating she was lost in thought.

"We could take the EVA suits," Harry suggested. But he didn't finish the scenario. B'Elanna's sharp look told him that it was obviously a bad idea. Even if they didn't go out the airlock but transported themselves into space as far away as they could, the Cardassians could still find them and pick them up. Or, worse, they'd be stuck in space with no food or water, waiting for someone to rescue them before they depleted their oxygen supply.

"The transporter." It wasn't a suggestion, so much as a definite statement. Though she was the ranking officer on the mission, B'Elanna had never really ordered Harry; they usually worked well enough together to avoid the chain of command. Now she assumed he'd see that her plan was better than his without having to pull rank. "We'll put the transporter in a looping diagnostic cycle and set it to rematerialize us in a given period of time – say, three hours."

"There's no guarantee that in three hours we wouldn't still be found and arrested by Seska."

"I know…" B'Elanna frowned. "We'll have to do something so they don't just find us in the pattern buffer."

"I think I've got an idea," Harry said suddenly. He pulled a phaser out of the compartment beneath the helm, adjusted the controls, and shot B'Elanna suddenly. Her eyes widened when she realized what he was doing, but she didn't have a chance to respond. She reeled for a moment, and then, as he should have expected, came at him in all her Klingon fury.

"_What the hell did you do that for?"_

"If we leave cellular residue and energy discharges in the cabin, they might think we committed suicide to avoid capture."

B'Elanna ripped the phaser from his hands, quickly adjusted the setting, and shot him point-blank. As Harry slumped in the pilot's seat, dazed, she smirked. "You could have at least warned me."

Harry shook the fog out of his head. "What level was that?"

"Oh, relax, I lowered it since you're human."

"Didn't feel lowered."

"You want me to shoot you at a higher setting so you can see the difference?"

Harry clenched his jaw slightly.

"Come on," B'Elanna said with a smirk, "let's get on those transporters."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Harry gave a loud groan as one of Seska's goons kicked him square in the kidney. He had long ago lost track of all the punches and kicks, but he was certain that this last one was going to leave him urinating blood for several weeks. He'd slid out of the chair they thoughtfully hadn't tied him to several minutes before, and he was now lying naked on the floor, his face in a puddle of his own blood and saliva.

"Let's try again, human," the Cardassian growled. "How do you know Seska's name, and where did you come from? Your ship came out of nowhere."

The Cardassians hadn't mentioned B'Elanna yet, and under the circumstances Harry thought he shouldn't either. _If she got away somehow, better to let them think I was alone,_ he rationalized. _I'm sure she'll come back for me._

"Like I told you before," Harry said, pausing to spit out a mouthful of blood, "I don't understand how this happened, but when I left, the Federation and the Cardassian Empire had a treaty. I was in a shuttle, and I hit some kind of displacement wave, but before that I was in the Delta Quadrant, sixty thousand light-years from here."

"Again with the same lies!"

"They're not lies," he said with quiet futility.

The two guards looked to Seska for advice. "He's not going to tell us anything but his fabricated stories," one said. "He's a waste of oxygen. Let me kill him."

Seska emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room. "Don't be ridiculous," she said easily. "He could be a useful worker. Have him put with the others being taken to Aldebaran. They'll pay us at least twenty leks for him."

The guards nodded their compliance, and Seska started for the door. She paused in the corridor and looked back at Harry, still lying naked on the floor, curled in ball, and shook her head with disgust.

* * *

B'Elanna still wasn't sure why she had rematerialized in the Sacajawea alone, but Harry was nowhere to be found, and his pattern was no longer in the buffer. The transporter records showed he had rematerialized safely two hours before her. He had survived the looping diagnostic, but she had to assume he had been taken by the Cardassians. It was up to her to find him, fix the ship, get them away from the Cardassians, and figure out a way to contact Starfleet. A big challenge, but she could do it. She had to do it.

Still unsure why the Cardassians were taking Federation citizens into custody, she decided to shed her Starfleet uniform. She rummaged around the duffel bag she'd brought, giving a small smile at the sight of her stuffed Toby the targ, always a comfort to her on an away mission, and she reached for a civilian jumpsuit she'd packed in case she and Harry had to stay out longer than the one day they'd anticipated.

She quickly changed into the maroon outfit and slipped out of the shuttlecraft and into the Cardassian shuttle bay. It was dark and drab – _just like everything Cardassian,_ she mused as she waited for the heavy door to roll open. She stepped over the lip of the airlock and into the corridor.

There weren't any Cardassians in sight, but B'Elanna recognized their scent. Instantly she was transported back to her days in the Maquis – which was strange, as she'd now served as a Starfleet officer on Voyager longer than she had ever been in the Maquis. But the smell – a sort of warm, fishy air – brought back memories of a time when that smell was always mixed with plasma leaks, blood, and charred flesh. Her two stomachs revolted at the reminder.

* * *

Harry was in a small cage – no, a cage would have had open sides, or sides with bars – it must have been a box. Or a very, very small room. He didn't think he could stand; the Cardassians had done a good enough job making sure his legs were weak. But he could tell from the feeling of the ceiling closing down on him that even if he could stand, the cell wasn't tall enough to allow him to. One of the side walls butted against his back, still naked, still bloody (but thankfully not cold, since Cardassians tended to prefer warmer climates than humans). The other wall of the cell was somewhere in front of him. He could just reach it with his fingertips, leaving him to estimate that he was in a space no larger than one meter cubed.

The door, or wall, or front of the cell opened, flooding him with the gray-red light of the Cardassian ship, and he was hit in the face with something scratchy but pliable. It took a minute to register that it was clothing being given to him.

_How can I put this on in here?_

Favoring the side the Cardassian had kicked, Harry slithered as well as he could into the legs of the jumpsuit by bracing his head against the ceiling of the cell. Then he wiggled his hips, trying not to yelp in pain, as he struggled to pull the suit over his chest and put his arms through the sleeves. It faintly occurred to him that he was still wearing his Starfleet-issue boots, a fact for which he was grateful. Starfleet boots were highly durable, constructed to last through combat and extreme environments. Harry had once been ordered to jog laps around the track in them when he was a cadet, a task which had left his poor feet blistered and sore, but now he understood that what the boots didn't accomplish in exercise training, they more than made up for in survival situations.

A few minutes later, the door opened again, and a strong arm yanked him out of the cell and onto his wobbly legs. Harry blinked a little into the light and was grateful that Cardassians kept their ships dim after the utter blackness of the cell. He was standing attention before a few armed guards and was flanked by several other scraggly-looking humanoids in equally shabby clothing.

"You are being taken to a work camp on Aldebaran," one of the guards explained. "The transport ship is waiting for you. Get moving."

The guards pointed their disruptor rifles in one direction, and Harry and the line of prisoners obediently filed out. They were herded through the corridors of the ship to an airlock. Then they were marched onto the cargo transport, where they were mercifully left unfettered as the ship made its way to the work camp that, Harry suspected, would either bring relief from the torture of being on a Cardassian ship or, worst case scenario, his death.

* * *

B'Elanna moved stealthily along the darkened corridors of the Cardassian ship, trying not to let it conjure up memories of her time in the Maquis – or her time spent with Dreadnought. When she found a control station, though, she had to begrudgingly admit that Dreadnought had at least afforded her the chance to learn how to read and manipulate Cardassian computers. She tried to access the internal sensors to scan for human lifesigns. She found several: two decks up and nearly half the ship over. There was a turbolift a few meters from her current position, but that seemed too risky. She opted for the nearest access conduit, which was right underneath the console.

B'Elanna slipped quietly into the conduit and crawled as quickly as she could in the direction the computer had indicated. In the silence of the conduit she could hear the sound of her heart beating furiously, her predatory Klingon reflexes on alert.

Cardassian ships weren't built like Starfleet's. On a Starfleet ship the Jefferies tubes ran both vertically and horizontally, connected at large junctions that were tall enough for the average humanoid to stand in and wide enough to accommodate several crew members and large pieces of equipment. It took up a lot of interior space on a starship, but in the event the turbolifts went down, it was a necessary sacrifice. The Jefferies tubes may have also made the lives of engineers difficult, as they perpetually crawled around on hands and knees – no claustrophobics allowed in her department – but the sheer span of the tubes and the accessibility they offered to the inner workings of the ship made it worthwhile.

Cardassian ships, she'd learned from studying schematics in the Maquis and from her quick glance at the console, had vertical and horizontal access conduits, but they did not intersect. In other words, once B'Elanna reached the end of the conduit she was currently crawling through, she'd have to take her chances emerging once again into the main corridor before she could reenter a horizontal conduit and make her way up two decks.

As she reached the end of the tube, she found the access panel and with some force jimmied it open. But before she could remove it completely and slide out, two things occurred to her at the same time: one, that she heard boots coming down the corridor toward her current position, and two, that she hadn't logged off the console when she was accessing the internal sensors. She had essentially given her position away, and as the panel was ripped from her hands, B'Elanna realized the Cardassians had taken her gift to them.

"Get out," one barked.

She could only see their legs and boots, but the end of a disruptor rifle pointing into the conduit did much to motivate her. She slithered out and straightened herself.

The Cardassians stared at her for a moment, and then turned to each other with expressions of awe on their face.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

When Harry had been arrested, tried, and convicted by the Akritirians a year before, it had been the worst experience of his life until that point. Maybe even still. Battling the Borg and Species 8472 was scary, but it was at least what he'd been trained for. The Akritirian prison – prison in general – was not something he really had much experience with, apart from a few simulations at the Academy that certainly did not compare. The only thing that had made the experience of being dumped into the Akritirians' amoral version of a prison remotely tolerable – the only thing that had kept him alive, in fact – was the presence of Tom Paris.

As he stumbled around the dusty surface of the planet that was his latest interstellar prison, Harry was grateful he hadn't been retrofitted with any "clamp" and that he could see the sunshine. Already, the place had two advantages over his last prison stay. But without Tom or B'Elanna – whom he was beginning to fear was dead – he wasn't sure how he was going to survive a labor camp in the middle of nowhere, much less plot an escape.

And then he ran into a _very_ familiar face: his own.

"Who are you?" the lookalike asked.

"Um, I'm Ensign Harry Kim, from the Federation starship Voyager," he answered tentatively. "Who are you?"

"Well, my name's Harry Kim, but I don't know what the hell the rest of that meant."

"Your name is Harry Kim?"

"Yes," the lookalike answered. "Yours too?"

"Yeah."

Harry stared at the mirror image of himself for a moment, drawing in a sharp breath. He understood now why Seska was still alive and why Cardassians who had never heard of Starfleet were selling humans to labor camps. He and B'Elanna hadn't just been blown off course; they had crossed into some kind of parallel universe.

As he looked around the camp, Harry realized it wasn't really a universe he wanted to be part of.

* * *

B'Elanna Torres did not like being restrained.

She had awakened to find herself trapped in a chair, and from the jostling of the deckplate beneath her feet, she could guess that she was on a ship traveling at impulse. The two Cardassians who had found her must have taken her captive; she remembered bucking and kicking as violently as she could while they hustled her down the corridor, but she didn't remember being rendered unconscious.

She fought again now as she tested the strength of the restraints. Her wrists were secured in a locking mechanism behind the chair, and using her fingertips to explore it, she could tell it had an electronic lock. It would do no good to try to break free by sheer force.

She was also gagged, tightly, which only served to demean her. B'Elanna knew from experience that humiliation could be a great motivator. As soon as the gag was out, she was going to use her freed mouth to tell the Cardassians exactly what she thought of them.

The door to the room opened, and a Cardassian approached her. She thought she recognized his face from her time in the Maquis, when they'd memorized the faces of all the most vicious military leaders. _What was his name?_ He came closer now, leaning down toward her, and her eyes widened involuntarily as she awaited his next move.

_Damar._

He removed the gag from her mouth, and she spat in his face. He didn't flinch or even bother to wipe his gray cheek.

"I'm sorry we had to do that," he explained, "but we had to make it look like we were taking you to the detention cells."

_Detention cells. That must be where Harry is._

"I'm not in a detention cell?"

"No, you're on a shuttle we procured. You see, we're with the Obsidian Order. We're getting you out of here."

* * *

"Thank you," Harry said gratefully as his counterpart gave him a drink of water. He sipped it slowly, appreciatively, before handing the cup back. He was reclining against the wall of a makeshift shelter, getting some relief from the heat of the planet and some much-needed rest after his beating on the Cardassian ship.

"It's the first thing everyone learns here," his mirror self explained. "Find a shelter, find water, and find food. It's the only way to keep up your strength. The Cardie guards don't feed us enough, and when somebody gets weak…" Harry didn't really need him to finish the sentence.

"How long have you been here?"

"Six months. I was captured running arms to the Terran Rebellion in the Badlands." The other Harry grinned with pride. "This is where the send the worst offenders."

"I wasn't involved with any kind of rebellion," Harry said. "My friend and I – we were just going about our business on our ship."

The other Harry nodded. "The patrollers are supposed to take border violators to Terok Nor for processing, but sometimes they just sell them to the work camps. The guards here pay by the head because the Alliance pays them by the kiloton of ore."

Before Harry could ask any of the number of questions running through his mind, they were interrupted by a woman's voice. "I found a few icoberries on the tree by the rock pit." Silhouetted against the bright sky as she entered, she continued, "It's not much, but it's better than that fish-rot soup they served for lunch."

"Thanks, babe," the other Harry called back. "We have a visitor. You're not going to believe who came off the latest transport."

As the woman came nearer, Harry could make out her form in the relative darkness of the shelter. "Seven?"

"Harry?"

* * *

"Look, if you're trying to rescue me, why don't you take off these restraints and let me move to the front of the shuttle?" B'Elanna asked her captor.

Damar sighed heavily. "Please understand…You could be the answer to all our problems, but we can't take any risks with you."

"The answer to your problems?" she echoed.

The Cardassian nodded, moving one gray finger toward her very slowly, as if afraid she would lash out again (a reasonable fear, B'Elanna acknowledged). He didn't make contact with her, but she got the gist when his finger stopped a centimeter away from her forehead.

"Haven't you ever seen a Klingon before?"

"Klingon? Yes, of course, we're in the Alliance."

"Alliance?"

The Cardassian frowned at her reticence but explained, "The Klingon-Cardassian Alliance that dominates this region of space. The internal sensors on the ship said you had…Terran…lifesigns."

"My mother was Klingon, but my father was human," B'Elanna said, and Damar had a paroxysm of excitement over her revelation. "Why does that matter?"

"What's your name?"

"My name?"

"Please," Damar beseeched, "tell me your name."

"B'Elanna Torres." As soon as it came out, she realized it was her second mistake of the day.

"I knew it." Damar held up a small device. "I'll need a sample of your DNA to confirm it." Before she could protest, he had quickly withdrawn a few drops of her pinkish blood. He headed away from her, saying nothing, and leaving her still in the restraints.

* * *

Harry watched in some awe as his counterpart and a woman who looked an awful lot like Seven of Nine, minus the Borg implants, kissed a passionate hello. When they parted, his counterpart turned to him, with a grin Harry hadn't seen on his own face since the start of their ill-fated journey into the Delta Quadrant. "She's really something, isn't she?"

"You're Annika Hansen," Harry said to the Seven lookalike.

"Yes," she answered cautiously. "Do I know you?" She looked at the other Harry. "Do you have a twin you haven't told me about?"

"Babe, this guy says he's Harry Kim, too," his counterpart explained.

"Oh, yeah?" Annika took three steps toward Harry, and without warning wrapped one arm around his neck and kissed him. It took Harry a second to register what she was doing, seconds in which his tongue lay idle in his mouth in confusion. "He sure doesn't kiss like you."

The other Harry grinned again. "Good, then I guess I have nothing to worry about." They shared a laugh at Harry's expense. "Babe, he thinks he crossed over from a parallel universe."

She sized up Harry for a moment. "We should bring him to the meeting tonight. Let the Indian decide what to do with him."

"No way," the other Harry said, taking a seat on the floor of the shelter. He handed Harry a few berries. "I really hate that guy. I'm not letting him get his sweaty hands on some clone of me."

"You're not thinking straight," Annika ridiculed. She took a moment to eat a berry. "Chakotay told everyone to be at the meeting tonight. He might have a way to get us out of here."

"Might, might, might. All I'm saying is, if we try our luck at an escape on the ground, we can be out of here tomorrow."

"Did you say Chakotay?" Harry interrupted. They looked at him. "Tall, dark hair, funny tattoo on his face?"

"No tattoo," Annika told him, "but tall, dark, and handsome. He says he has an escape plan in the works. He has half the camp wrapped around his finger." She looked affectionately at Harry's counterpart. "The other half are wrapped around his."

"Can you take me to meet him?" Harry asked. If Chakotay in this universe was like the resistance leader he'd been in the Maquis, then he might be able to help them escape. _Plus, it's better than hanging out with these two. _There was something about the way his counterpart kept calling Seven of Nine "babe" that was making Harry very uncomfortable.

* * *

"B'Elanna Torres," Damar explained, calling up an image of her on the display panel. "Half-Terran, half-Klingon. Daughter of sub-regent Miral and her…_employee_ John Torres."

Finally freed from her restraints, B'Elanna crossed the room to look at the image on screen. It was her own face, but framed by long, wavy, Klingon hair. She could guess what kind of employee her father had been – it was evident from the slight sneer on Damar's face – but she didn't understand her mother's job. "What's a sub-regent?"

"Miral worked directly under the regent. She was in charge of this sector of space. Administratively, militarily, socially, financially. We all worked for her."

"You keep using the past tense."

Damar tapped the panel, causing the image of the other B'Elanna to disappear. "There was a development recently."

_In other words, she's dead._

B'Elanna let out a breath, shaking her head slightly. "I'm just trying to wrap my brain around all of this. My mother was a powerful leader, and my father some kind of sex slave. And I'm in some kind of alternate universe where the Obsidian Order is a benevolent organization."

The door to the quarters opened, and in walked a Klingon in full armor. "I wanted to meet her."

Damar nodded. "B'Elanna, this is Gowron, your assistant. You're going to be the new sub-regent."

"What?" She whirled around to face him. "Where's your B'Elanna Torres?"

Damar and Gowron looked at each other. "After we verified your DNA," Gowron explained, "it was necessary to ensure that you could infiltrate the Alliance without suspicion."

"So you assassinated her."

"We took the necessary precautions," Damar explained, somehow managing to neither confirm nor deny B'Elanna's accusation. "You will take her place, with help from us, and we can finally turn the Alliance around."

"What exactly is it you want to accomplish?"

Gowron's beady eyes bored into her, showing his sincerity as he answered simply, "Peace."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Oh, no," B'Elanna said, involuntarily backing away from Gowron and Damar. "You've got to be kidding me. There's no way I'm going to stay here and serve as your sub-regent." Considering her present location, she thought it would be better to get back to her universe, still in the Alpha Quadrant, so that she and Harry could tell Starfleet Voyager wasn't missing and maybe help get the ship home. But she'd take what she could get. If she had to be sent back to the Delta Quadrant, so be it. At least there her enemies were her enemies, and her friends were her friends. Here, in this topsy-turvy universe she'd entered, she found herself in the middle of a scheme with a Cardassian who had once been her mortal enemy – being asked to play the role of a political figure in an immoral empire so that she could help lead a slave revolt and bring the empire down. No, there was no way she'd cooperate with such an absurd plan.

"How did I get here?" she asked them suddenly.

"Do you think we're responsible?" Damar asked. It sounded to her as though he was testing her, trying to see how much she knew.

"Are you responsible?"

"Damar," Gowron hissed in warning.

"I can tell you how you got here," Damar continued, ignoring Gowron, "and maybe help you get back. But you have to help us first."

"By pretending to be the sub-regent?"

"Yes."

B'Elanna scowled, her arms crossing over her chest. "And what exactly is it you want me to do as the sub-regent?"

Gowron stepped forward. "We need you to liberate a few leaders of the Terran Rebellion who are working with us. Then we'll all go to the Betreka Nebula, where we will raise an army to defeat Martok, who is trying to take power in the sector."

"It's very simple, really," Damar added.

"It doesn't sound very simple to me," B'Elanna argued.

Damar gave her a genuine Cardassian smile, a bone-chilling facial expression that meant he wasn't smiling inside at all but knew coercion would get him farther than provocation. It made her shiver. "You help us, and then we turn you loose with information about how to get back to your universe. Do we have a deal?"

"No deal," she said firmly.

"You're not in a position to negotiate!" Gowron reminded her.

She held her ground. "I have to find my crewmate. That's my priority. After that I have to get home. If you want my cooperation, you'd better come up with a plan that includes those two things."

The two men looked at each other, but B'Elanna couldn't read their expressions. Then, wordlessly, they left her alone in the room.

* * *

"Once upon a time, humans were strong," Chakotay began, pacing around the assembled prisoners in the darkness of the night. "We had a vast empire that stretched across several systems. We were powerful. We were smart. We had the entire future before us."

"If that's true," a sarcastic voice called from the crowd, "then why are we slaves now?"

There was something familiar about the voice. Harry looked across the crowd to see who had spoken, but with only the light from the stars and two moons, it was too dark to see the face.

"What's your name, son?" Chakotay asked him patiently.

"No names. I give you my name, and the next thing I know is that I'm on some Cardassian hit list."

He didn't have to give Chakotay a name for Harry to identify him. The voice, he could tell, belonged to Tom Paris.

Chakotay relented, turning his attention back to the others. "Do you see what they have done to us? How they've made us mistrustful of each other? The only way we can defeat them is to stand together."

"That, or we could just attack them at daybreak and make a run for it."

That was the voice of the mirror Harry. "Look, I think everyone here knows I have a lot of respect for Chakotay –" It didn't escape Harry that his alter ego's tone belied the truth of the sentiment – "but he talks about trust and visions of a utopia and waiting for the right moment, as if we have all the time in the world. Two days ago, Finnegan and Zach Taylor were executed by the spoonheads. How long do we have to wait to take action? To defend ourselves?" A few in the crowd murmured in support. "All we need to do is cooperate tomorrow morning to attack the guards. We come at them with everything we have, take their weapons, kill them, and make a run for it." More now indicated their approval of this plan.

"Where are you going to go?" Chakotay asked. The question was directed at the whole group. "There are force fields around the camp, and you wouldn't be able to leave the surface. You haven't thought this out. Wait a few more days. The Terran Rebellion is going to come. I have ships."

"Where are these magical ships now?" Annika asked, rising to mirror Harry's defense. "Have you been in contact with them through your subspace transmitter?"

Several people in the crowd laughed at Chakotay's expense.

"I know my cell," he said calmly. "Before I was arrested, we all agreed to liberate the camp. They're supposed to be here in four days. And they'll come. With reinforcements. If we do anything rash now, we'll risk making things more difficult for ourselves later. The Cardies might increase the number of guards or change the perimeter controls. I'm asking you to trust me. To trust me and to wait."

Harry looked carefully around the assembled prisoners, gauging their reactions. After a few minutes it seemed that the soft-spoken Chakotay had won out over his counterpart. The crowd began to dissipate, sneaking away quietly in the shadows of the night, resolved to wait until their leader told them to take further action.

As the two Harrys and Annika made their way back to their shelter together, it was quite clear that mirror Harry was disappointed he hadn't been able to rally more support. "Sometimes I wonder if that damn Indian is conspiring against us," he admitted quietly.

"No," Annika quickly corrected him. "He's dedicated to the cause. He's just…an idealist."

"What we ought to do," her lover said, "is get out of here and try to find Harry's shuttle. Maybe he can take us back with him."

Harry didn't respond but thought over the probability of success for such a plan. Even if there was some way to escape the camp, it would still be difficult to track down the Sacajawea. The last thing he knew was that it was being tractored by Seska's ship. For all he knew, it was in still in her shuttle bay. How would they get to it? Where would they go if they did manage to secure it? He didn't know how to get back to his universe.

"How about it, Harry Two?" Annika asked playfully. She had decided that afternoon to keep track of the men by numbering them, and Harry _hated_ it. "If you find a way home, will you take us?"

If he could find a way back to his reality, Harry knew that bringing them wasn't an option. Though he didn't have much affection for his alter ego at this point, he didn't want him – or Annika or Chakotay or any of the Terrans – to suffer. But there were strict rules about these kinds of things, and his duty as a Starfleet officer came up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder, reminding him that even though he was out of uniform, it would still follow him wherever he went.

But somehow he didn't think Harry One and Annika would take too well to hearing that answer.

"_If_ I can find a way home."

They made themselves as comfortable as they could on the floor of the shelter, with heads resting on pillows of dried leaves and rocks. Harry One and Annika curled up together, and Harry was glad there was only a very faint light coming from the entrance to the shelter so that he didn't have to look at them.

His counterpart still managed to shoot him a triumphant grin across the darkness, as if saying that he knew he'd won the big prize. He draped an arm around Annika's waist. "You know the real reason Chakotay hates me, Har? I got the girl."

* * *

True to Chakotay's word, a faction of the Terran Rebellion was making preparations from their secret base inside the Betreka Nebula. In his absence a woman had risen to power, and she was determined to get her wayward comrades in line to rescue their leader.

"There are four days until our scheduled attack on Aldebaran," Kathryn reminded them. "And we still don't have any reinforcements lined up. What the hell happened to Tuvok and Bashir?"

"The word is that the Alliance got to Tuvok somehow," Reg, a balding man who claimed to be good with technology, informed her. "Messed with his head."

"As if he wasn't messed up enough," Zimmerman, another balding man with a chilling bloodlust, chimed in.

Kathryn stalked around their makeshift command post. "There's no way the three of us can do it alone." Reg and Zimm looked at each other, and slowly smiles started to spread on their faces. "You want to tell me what the big secret is?"

"Actually," Reg explained, leading Kathryn to the nearest contraband computer, "Zimm and I have been trying to figure out alternatives, and we think we've got something." He punched a few buttons on the computer console. "Watch…this." There was a faint shimmering in front of them, and then a man identical to Zimm materialized out of thin air.

"What the hell is that?"

"This," Zimm said, gesturing to his twin, "is called a holographic man." He and Reg shared a grin at their success. "Here's what we think, Kathryn. We think we can create an army of these –"

"And fight the Alliance this way, sparing the lives of the rebels," she finished. She looked between the two. "Nice work, gentlemen."

"There's just one problem," Zimm added. "We can only create these guys in places were there are holographic projectors. So no fighting on Cardassian or Klingon ships."

"Can we create portable projectors that our people can carry around or set up spur of the moment?"

"Maybe," Reg said, using his fingers to comb a few long strands of hair over his bald spot. "But that isn't really either of our forte. We also need to create more – a lot more. We only have the one right now. But it's going to take more computer power."

Kathryn looked between the two men a little dubiously. They'd been working together in the same cell of the Terran Rebellion for fourteen months, and she still wasn't entirely sure she trusted either of them. Reg looked positively seedy with his combover, though he was shaping into a talented computer hack. And Zimm – well, Kathryn didn't trust a man who didn't have a first name.

But Chakotay had willingly gotten arrested so that he could get inside the Aldebaran labor camp, and he was counting on them to help him liberate it. There was no way he could do that alone from the inside.

And without reinforcements there was no way she, Reg, and Zimm could do it from the outside. She nodded at the two men. "Tell me what I can do to help. We're going to need this holographic army up and running in four days." A wide grin spread across her face. "And let's make sure they know how to kill."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

B'Elanna was mildly impressed with how well she had undertaken the role of Klingon administrator. All that time spent listening to her mother prattle on about the way of the warrior and her two years at the Klingon monastery after her father left must have paid off. Either that, or she was a much better actress than she'd ever thought. _Maybe the next time the Doctor directs one of Harry's plays I'll volunteer to be in it_, she thought, and then she quickly changed her mind._ Who am I kidding? No way._

Gowron and Damar had taken her to a new ship, one that she was to use as her personal property while she reclaimed power in the sector from the renegade Martok. The only problem was that the ship was populated with a lot more Cardassians and Klingons – some of whom weren't involved in the Obsidian Order, Damar warned. Some of the crew were rumored to be spies for Martok, some were involved with aiding the Terran Rebellion, and some just wanted to kill the mongrel sub-regent who tainted the purity of the Klingon bloodline. Trying to sort out who was a friend and who was a foe was difficult, and she wasn't entirely certain she could trust her so-called friends anyway. Still, if she went along with the plan, she'd have a much better chance of finding Harry and trying to get home.

At the sound of the door chime, she gruffly bid entrance to two Klingons, a Cardassian, and an Andorian. The Andorian was a definite change of pace from the smattering of species she'd seen so far in this universe.

"What do you want?" she demanded in her best authoritative Klingon voice.

"Sub-regent, we need additional fighters if we are going to take on Martok," the Andorian said, bowing his head slightly. His antennae wiggled at her, entirely too close to her nose for her comfort. B'Elanna resisted the urge to take a few steps backward, though – if she was right about the role she was supposed to be playing, it was more likely she'd knock him over, rather than moving herself.

"Are you telling me you're too incompetent to do the job yourselves?" she barked, but inside she knew they had just given her the opening Gowron and Damar had told her to look for.

"No, Sub-regent," one of the Klingons assured her. He came forward and dropped to one knee, his fist clenched over his chest. "Daughter of Miral, please understand, we only want to make the battle go smoothly for you, so that you can be assured of a long and peaceful reign."

She nearly snorted aloud at that but managed to control herself. "I see," she said evenly. "Set a course for the nearest work camp. We'll buy some dispensable Terrans to help you."

"Terrans?" the other Klingon spat. "We need _warriors!_"

"Don't be a fool," the Cardassian said. "The sub-regent knows Klingon life must be preserved. If we suffer casualties in battle with Martok, let us be populated with Terrans."

"And Vulcans," the Andorian added. "I never liked them."

"Fine," B'Elanna intervened. "Set a course, and I'll pick out some strong Terrans for you myself." She gave a wry grin. "After all, I think I know a thing or two about them."

"With all due respect," the Andorian said, bowing once again, and this time his left antennae nearly tickled her face, "you should not subject yourself to their presence. My job is to do that kind of work for you."

_Oh, please forgive me_, she thought with an inward groan, _but I've always heard that these grow back._ She swiftly pulled the _d'k tagh_ knife from her belt and sliced off the offending antenna. The Andorian lifted his head, then reeled at the sudden disruption in his equilibrium, and stumbled backward into the arms of one of the Klingons.

"You speak when spoken to!" B'Elanna shouted, shaking the knife at them all. "I told you I would pick out the Terrans, and I will! Now get out!"

Thankfully, the three left her chambers without further protest. After the door slid closed behind them, B'Elanna sank into her chair – her throne – and bit her lip.

* * *

It was breakfast time at the work camp on Aldebaran, and the prisoners had taken their seats around several long tables mercifully located under a group of trees. By 0900 the camp was steamy; by lunchtime the heat in the rock quarries, with no shade or breezes, would be nearly unbearable. For the time being, the prisoners took advantage of this momentary respite from their work and the sun.

Harry was slightly alarmed at how well he'd adapted to life in the camp in only a few days. The injuries the Cardassians had inflicted were healing, thanks to some special attention by Harry One and Annika, and he found the work of searching for valuable minerals among the rocks a mindless distraction. He was even getting to know some of the prisoners, talking to them, hearing their stories. That was the alarming part: he knew he couldn't stay forever – he had to get back to his world – and he could sense that he was becoming emotionally attached.

_I can't get complacent about being here,_ he reminded himself over a spoonful of fish soup. _I'm not one of them. I have to figure out a way to escape._

There were still two plans for escape going around the camp. The first was Chakotay's and promised a siege that would liberate them but meant they would have to wait a few more days. The second was Harry One's and offered the unlikely scenario of surviving a battle with the armed guards but promised they'd go down in a blaze of glory.

The Cardassians seemed to pay no heed to either plan, and in spite of the deadly consequences for being unable to work, they didn't punish anyone for talk of liberation. Harry had to wonder if it was because they guessed no escape attempt would be successful. For all he knew, the Cardassians had ships in orbit. Or maybe they just assumed that the Terrans were incapable of rising up after too many generations of being oppressed.

He was developing a new appreciation for his Bajoran and Maquis friends on Voyager.

Chakotay took a seat opposite him, eyeing him carefully. "Can we talk like civilized people?"

"What?" Harry looked up from his soup. "Oh, I'm not him. I'm just his lookalike."

"I know who you are," Chakotay said clearly. "He always has that dumb smirk on his face and that blonde on his arm. There's something different about you. It's in the eyes."

Harry forced another spoonful of the awful soup down his throat. It tasted like rotten lettuce and had the consistency of a thick puree, but he knew that missing a meal would make him weaker and susceptible to further injury. "When you talk about what humans are capable of, I guess it just reminds me of where I come from."

"So you understand," Chakotay said, ladling his own soup, "that we could be everything the Cardassians and Klingons are. We don't have to be the bottom-feeders anymore. We could be the elite."

"That's not what I meant," Harry corrected. "In my universe we're not interested in vying for power – not like that. We seek peace with other species. We want to learn about each other."

Chakotay choked, his hand flying to his mouth to prevent him from spitting the soup out. Then he started laughing openly at Harry. "Let me tell you one thing, kid. If the Terrans ever succeed in their rebellion, we're not going to be arranging any kind of peace treaty with the Cardassians and the Klingons. The first thing we're going to do is start executing them one by one for treating us like this."

An identical copy of Tom Paris dropped into the empty seat beside Harry without a word. He avoided making eye contact with either man and concentrated on his soup.

Chakotay looked up from his meal, and Harry could see all his powers of persuasion rising to the surface as he began to speak. "You're the one who voiced your concern at the meeting, aren't you?" Tom didn't acknowledge him. "What's your name?"

Tom looked at Chakotay with slight terror in his eyes. "Why?"

"Relax, I just wanted to know what to call you."

He shook his head furiously.

"All right, then I'll just call you Nick, okay? You look like a Nick."

Harry watched Tom – Nick – eating, and he realized that what he had mistaken for sarcasm at the meeting had actually been total fear. The Tom Paris he knew might have stood up to Chakotay, but this Tom Paris – this Nick – was convinced there was no way they were ever going to get out. It didn't even occur to him to be angry about their situation; he thought they deserved it.

_What's a guy like that doing here?_

"Do you mind if I ask how you got here?" Harry asked them.

They looked at him suspiciously, but then Chakotay gave a curt nod. "I came of my own will." He waited a moment for Nick and Harry to express their surprise. "That's right. My cell and I arranged for me to be captured so I could get the camp ready for the attack. But your friend –" He was speaking now about Harry One – "has everyone convinced that there's not going to be one. Do you see now why I need him to back down?"

"You intentionally got arrested?" Harry repeated.

"It's a lot easier than trying to make it out there on your own," Nick agreed.

Harry wanted to roll his eyes. Had the man no gumption? "What about you, Nick? If you believe Terrans are destined to be slaves, why were you in the Rebellion?"

"I wasn't," Nick corrected. "My sisters and I were living on Gamma Ceti, and the Klingons attacked. One of my sisters was taken to be a consort to the Regent, and I was brought here. I don't know what happened to Kathleen."

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly.

"Doesn't that make you angry?" Chakotay prodded. "Doesn't that make you want to fight back? To crush their ugly foreheads to pieces?"

"You shouldn't talk so openly about such things."

Harry looked over at the next table to see who had spoken. It was Vorik. _How many people in this camp do I know?_

"What's your name, son?" Chakotay asked him.

He looked around the table, a question in his eyes. "He asks everybody that," Nick said with clear annoyance.

"Vorik," the Vulcan answered, albeit reluctantly.

"Vorik," Chakotay said calmly, "we can't be afraid of the consequences. If we don't talk openly about how we're being mistreated, then we're never going to be able to change things."

"We can't change things," Nick protested with a shake of his head.

"Attempting to do so would be illogical," Vorik added.

"Listen to me, both of you," Chakotay said, "my father told me stories when I was growing up about great struggles for freedom our people fought centuries ago. And even more recently, only about two hundred years ago, humans had a powerful interstellar empire."

"No way," Nick said. "That's just a legend."

"Empress Sato? Emperor McNally? They weren't just legends." Chakotay forced himself to swallow another bite of the fetid soup. "Anyway, it's still something we can inspire to."

"An empire in which Terrans dominate Vulcans, Bajorans, Cardassians, and Klingons?" Vorik challenged.

"No," Harry interrupted. "What about all of those species living together? Sharing technology and resources, instead of fighting each other?"

"What a dream," Chakotay said scornfully, rising with his bowl of soup. "Call me when you build your…federation of species. I'll join up."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Harry Kim was no longer finding life at the Aldebaran work camp tolerable. In addition to the unbearable heat, insufficient quantities of food and clean water, and mind-numbing labor of digging up rocks with potentially valuable minerals – all of which he felt he could reasonably handle for a few days – there was the growing problem of his role as social outcast.

It didn't take long after lunch for Chakotay to talk to Harry One about his counterpart's opposition to violence and his political views. From there the problem just seemed to grow. A number of prisoners, the same people he was beginning to care about, had called him a traitor to his face. Even more were simply ignoring his existence.

Perhaps the most excruciating moment came when Annika sashayed up to him, took a rock from his hand, threw it into the cart, and promptly slugged him. "You're not half the man Harry One is," she said. "I'm changing your name."

It was turning out to be a long day.

Harry was keeping a careful eye on Tom, who was continuing his work with noticeable effort. It was clear that he was dehydrated and growing weak. Since Tom was the only person at the camp who, like him, didn't seem that interested in annihilating the Cardassians, Harry decided to take a chance joining him at dinner.

"How are you doing, Nick?" He had been careful not to reveal he knew things about Tom that Tom hadn't told him – his name being the first.

"I'm okay," the man lied.

"No, you're not," Harry said gently. "I made three trips for each one you made this afternoon."

Tom eyed him over his soup. "Are you going to tell the guards?"

"No, of course not. I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

"What do you care? Once they start the liberation of the camp, I'll be the first one caught in the phaser fire."

"What makes you say that?" Harry asked with surprise.

"I'm not like Harry or Chakotay. I'm not strong like that."

Harry gave him a smile. "You're wrong."

Tom slurped another spoonful of the gray soup. "What do you know about me?"

_It's now or never._ "I know your real name is Tom Paris," Harry said quietly. Tom looked up at him in alarm. "It's okay – I won't tell anyone. In my universe you're my best friend, and you're one of the most fearless people I know. Sometimes," he added with a chuckle, "it's not fearlessness so much as recklessness."

"That's not me."

"I know." Harry flipped his spoon around in his hand thoughtfully. "But I think there are certain qualities that transcend the different universes. Take Chakotay. In my universe he's not as violent, but he's still a leader like that. Always fighting against injustice, always inspiring people to follow him."

Tom didn't answer but continued eating.

After a long moment Harry resumed. "And you – you're just as opposed to everything Chakotay suggests as the Tom in my world. See? I think you and Tom have a lot in common. I'll bet fate brought you to this camp. Chakotay and Harry are both too violent. Maybe the Terrans need a leader who will suggest something different to them – something like equality."

"No! You keep talking about independence and equality, and all you're doing is getting everyone's hopes up. We're _Terrans_," Tom said emphatically, his disdain for his own species plainly evident. "We'll never be as strong as the Klingons or as smart as the Cardassians. We were born to serve them." He rose from the bench and grabbed his bowl and spoon. "And I don't want to be a hero. Heroes always end up dead."

* * *

"Why are we dropping out of warp?" B'Elanna demanded, marching across the small ready room. "Have we already reached the labor camp?"

She watched Damar draw in a breath. "We located a person of some interest."

"Who?"

"They're bringing him to you now. He's a known member of the Terran Rebellion. He cost fifty leks. He'd better be worth it."

The doors to the room slid open, and two guards entered, each holding one arm of the prisoner.

"Tuvok?" B'Elanna took a few steps forward out of the shadows to inspect him. Apart from the unattractive goatee the man was sporting, he looked like Tuvok. But there was something sinister in his eyes that told her Vulcans in this reality didn't practice the ritual purging of emotions. "You're with the Terran Rebellion?"

"I was," Tuvok snarled. "For a time. But I was confused. Sisko is a dangerous man." He shook his head with clear contempt. "I'm cured now. I know my allegiance – and it's to the Alliance."

"Well, good," B'Elanna improvised. "I need to know I can trust you." Part of her wanted to heave a sigh. Why was it that in any universe Tuvok betrayed whatever rebel forces he joined? She looked to Damar for guidance, and she could see the disappointment he was trying to mask.

"Find him some quarters," he instructed the guards. As they started to lead Tuvok away, he added for good measure, "But keep an eye on him."

B'Elanna turned her attention back to Damar once the doors had closed. "How exactly did they 'cure' him?" she demanded.

Damar shrugged. "Dr. Moset has been experimenting with exoneurology."

His cavalier explanation angered her beyond control. She shoved him against the bulkhead, her elbow at his throat, just threatening to cut off his air supply. "In other words, you brainwashed him. Reprogrammed him."

"_I_ didn't do anything," he reminded her.

She drove her elbow into his thick gray flesh. "I want you to tell the Cardassians to leave my friends alone."

"Your friends? Terrans and Vulcans? Do I have to remind you that I'm your only friend here for the moment?"

With a growl she shoved him harder and then walked away. He was right, she knew. It wasn't her Tuvok being persuaded to follow the Alliance, and as much as she disliked Damar, he was trying to help the Rebellion.

"I don't belong here," she said aloud, though not really to him.

Damar laughed. "That is an entirely moot point. I'm sorry about Tuvok. He would have been helpful in defeating the Alliance, but there's nothing we can do about him now. You're going to have to develop a thicker skin if this is going to work."

"Maybe if I grew scales like you, Damar." B'Elanna crossed her arms over her chest and began pacing the room. "I don't know why I agreed to help you in the first place. As a Starfleet officer, I'm not supposed to get involved in other people's conflicts."

Damar laughed again, further enraging her. "What a convenient philosophy. You know, you're right. Why don't I just get you to a shuttlepod, and you can be on your merry way? Oh, that's right, because you have _no way of getting home_. You need me. And you're going to do what I say if you want to get out of here alive."

"Fine." B'Elanna turned sharply on her heel to face him. "But let's get one thing straight. The less you and I have to interact, the more cooperative I'll be, got it?"

"Whatever you say, Sub-regent."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

In the privacy of her ready room, B'Elanna took a moment to review the file on Tuvok that had been sent along with him and quickly verified that he had been involved in the Terran Rebellion until he was captured and reprogrammed by a Cardassian doctor. Her crew had bought him from a laboratory on Goralis III.

_What did I expect? He's not the same Tuvok._ She thought about the evil glint she had seen in his eye. _Not even close_.

As much as she wanted to keep Tuvok on board and try to find a way to undo what had been done to him, she knew he was too dangerous now. If he'd been brainwashed by the Alliance, then he might see through the Obsidian Order's plans to establish B'Elanna as sub-regent. There was certainly no way he'd be willing to help them take on Martok.

"Damar," she called over the comm. "Can you come in here?"

The doors to the ready room slid open, admitting Damar. "You really shouldn't _ask_, you know. You should _give orders_."

"I have bigger problems to worry about right now. What are we going to do with Tuvok?"

"We have to keep up the pretense of wanting him. If you try to get rid of him now that you know what's happened to him, it'll look suspicious. You'd be putting us all at risk."

"And if instead we keep him here," she said, trying to finishing his train of thought, "people will believe we're using him to help us infiltrate the Rebellion."

"We can't keep him here," he argued, confirming her earlier assessment. "He's too dangerous."

B'Elanna looked into his eyes, noticing for the first time that they were gray-blue, very much alive, and not at all the discs of obsidian she had expected. _I've been staring at his forehead,_ she realized, _or that cord down his nose. I've been doing exactly what I hate for people to do to me._

_Concentrate on the situation, B'Elanna. _They needed to get rid of Tuvok in a manner befitting their mission. "What if we make an exchange? His file says that he worked at Terok Nor before he joined the Rebellion. Can we take him back there and offer him as a trade for some other people? Surely there are other rebels there. Maybe Harry's there, too."

Damar's eyes lit up at the suggestion. "You're starting to think like a sub-regent," he complimented her. "Tuvok will be worth at least three Terrans."

The idea of trading one life for another, of establishing that kind of commodity value to people, was inhuman to B'Elanna, but she held out hope that Harry had been taken to Terok Nor as Seska had initially said. If that was the case, she'd soon be reunited with him.

"I told the Klingons that we needed…expendable soldiers," she told him. "But if we can get the Terrans behind me as sub-regent, it would show the Alliance that I could make a good leader. They wouldn't have to worry about uprisings if the Terrans are pleased with the leader of the sector, right?"

"Why would the Terrans support you?"

"Because I'm half-human. I'm one of them."

"You're also half-Klingon," he reminded her. "One of the enemy."

It didn't matter. She was determined to see who was working on Terok Nor, regardless of whether or not they could agree on the reason why. She decided to follow his earlier suggestion. "Tell them to set a course for Terok Nor," she commanded. "Now."

* * *

"Nick, how are you feeling today?" Chakotay asked solicitously as he they headed back to their makeshift sleeping areas for the night.

Harry overheard and turned with some curiosity to see how Tom was going to answer. His friend gave a sigh, clearly unhappy that Chakotay was still trying to court him into his circle, and said meekly, "I guess I'm okay."

"Did you get enough to eat at dinner?"

"Not really."

"I have some soti root, if you'd like it," Chakotay offered.

_Damn, he's good._ It was hard for Harry not to see the Chakotay he knew, who would have offered his food because he was genuinely concerned with Tom's well-being. _Not this Chakotay, _he had to remind himself. _He just wants his loyalty, and he doesn't want him to side with Harry._ Thinking about himself in the third person was starting to give him a headache.

As if they were of the same mind, Harry One leaned over and murmured, "See how far that guy will go just to get people to follow him? As if he cares about anything other than killing Cardassians."

"I just want you to leave me alone," Tom whimpered to Chakotay. _"Please."_

Chakotay sighed heavily but nodded his acknowledgment. Then he raised his eyebrows at the two Harrys as if to blame them for the fact that he couldn't reach Tom.

* * *

"The holograms aren't ready, and we need to take action," Kathryn said definitively. She clenched her jaw in thought for a moment, then nodded with sudden determination. "We'll raid the camp without them."

"Are you kidding?" Zimm protested. "That's suicide!"

"One more day!" Reg pleaded. "I know we can get them working."

Kathryn stabbed a few controls on the computer, which sparked and sputtered. She slapped it with an open palm, and a hologram materialized. Then he began disappearing, one limb after another fading in and out as his face slowly dissolved. She looked knowingly at Reg and Zimm.

"Forget it. You've been tinkering around with this program for two days. It's time to take action."

"I know we can have them ready in a few more days, Kathryn," Reg insisted. "Launching the strike now, on our own, doesn't make sense."

"Kathryn, none of the other rebel factions are ready to help us. It'll be suicide."

"Why are you so obsessed with this?"

"That camp has more members of the Rebellion than anywhere else in Alliance space," Kathryn reminded them both.

"And it has Chakotay," Zimm added with a knowing smile. "That's what this is really about, isn't it? You're just desperate to go rescued your beloved who willingly sacrificed himself for the sake of the cause."

"Shut up, Zimm," Kathryn warned.

Reg gave a soft laugh. "You're an idiot, Zimm."

Zimm turned to face Reg with surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Kathryn's not in love with Chakotay," Reg told him confidently. "There are other people in that camp, you know."

"Of course there are…oh, but you mean…who?"

"Yeah, Reg," Kathryn added, "who?"

"Harry Kim."

At this Kathryn laughed outright. Then she picked up the nearest object, some kind of tool they'd been using on the unreliable computer, and hurled it across the room. "Let's get something straight. While you're sitting around playing fix-it and speculating about my love life, Terrans are suffering at the hands of the Alliance. My only concern is getting them out. Got it?" She paused only for effect, not really expecting an answer from either of them. "Chakotay is expecting us at 1300 tomorrow. If they start attacking the guards from the inside, they're going to need us there to help get them out. We can't expect them to hold out until the holographic soldiers are ready. We launch tomorrow. You'd better be ready."

* * *

There was something in the air that morning, Harry noticed. Something was definitely going on. Harry One and Annika were heady with anticipation, and Chakotay was concentrating so hard on his work that he had to have been covering for something. It was fairly obvious to Harry that today was the day the Terran Rebellion planned to liberate the camp.

The fact that no one had told him gave him some concern. If there was a sudden firefight, the tired, weakened prisoners with no weapons should know to stay out of the way. He gazed around the camp, wondering how many of them were about to become martyrs for the cause without even knowing it.

"Chakotay," he called as the older man passed by. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"What's on your mind?"

Harry looked hard at him. "It's today, isn't it?" Chakotay said nothing and evenly held Harry's gaze, but there was something in his eyes that confirmed Harry's suspicions. "You have to warn people."

"I did. Everyone worth warning, anyway."

"You mean the people who've believed in you all along."

Chakotay nodded. "They know what to do when the time comes."

"And the others? What's going to happen to them?"

Chakotay shrugged slightly. "There's always a price to freedom."

Harry nearly exploded. "These are innocent people! And the only reason they have to get hurt is because you're too vain to warn them! What time is the strike taking place?" Chakotay didn't answer. "What time?" he demanded again, his voice rising.

"Keep your cool," Chakotay warned. "I don't need you and your pacifism interfering. Sometimes you have to use your fists. It's the way things work."

Harry shoved Chakotay against the nearest work cart, his back leaning over at uncomfortable angle and Harry's hand at his throat. "Tell me what time!"

Chakotay began laughing. "Lunch," he managed to gasp. As Harry released him, he stood and dusted himself off. "See, Harry? Fists."

"There's a difference," Harry argued as Chakotay began to walk away. "I'm trying to protect people, and you're trying to get them killed."

Chakotay whirled around and put his hands on his hips. He nearly licked his lips with smug satisfaction. "But think of how much sympathy their deaths will earn. Our numbers will swell."

"You're insane," Harry realized, the words coming out slowly and with surprise. "Was this ever even about freedom for you?" Chakotay merely turned around and started walking away, leaving Harry to call after him in frustration, "Did you ever even care about anyone but yourself?"

"Well, look who's at it again."

He turned to find Annika standing behind him with her hands on her hips. She shook her head slightly, causing her blond ponytail to swing from side to side. For a brief moment he contemplated what a beautiful, expressive woman she was, and he wondered if Seven of "Ensign, take off your clothes" Nine was one day going to be like her. "Annika, did you know about the plans for today?"

"Of course I did. He still thinks he can get me."

It took Harry a moment to understand what she was saying – that in spite of Harry One and Chakotay's rivalry, Chakotay missed a perfect opportunity to get Harry One killed because he wanted to impress Annika. Or maybe he just wanted to save them both because he really loved her. Or maybe Annika was just really egotistical.

"Why haven't you warned everyone?"

"Will you relax? Everyone we need to launch the assault knows what to do, and the others have been through this kind of thing enough to know to stay out of the way."

"Don't you think our chances of being successful will increase if more prisoners help?"

"_Our_ chances?" she scoffed. "Who says _you're_ going to be involved?"

He hadn't considered that. He was, after all, a Starfleet officer, trained to attack and defend – though only when nonviolent solutions had been exhausted. He also hadn't been in the camp as long as the others and was still a little stronger, a little less malnourished. He thought of himself as an obvious choice.

_Now who's being egotistical?_

"Annika," he said, reaching out tentatively to touch her arm, "I know that you don't think much of me, but I've been trained, maybe more than any of you, and you're going to need as much help as possible to get everyone out of here with minimal casualties." He caught her bright blue eyes for a moment before adding with some confidence, "I know you don't really want people to die today just to rally support for the Rebellion."

She averted her eyes then, leaving Harry to assume that he was right but that she felt helpless to stop Chakotay.

"Let me help you organize the prisoners," Harry said softly. "Please."

"Why?" she asked, equally quietly.

"Because I don't want anyone to get hurt if it can be prevented," Harry explained. "And I want you to have the freedom you deserve. Despite what you think of me, I'm not a traitor."

Annika just looked at him for a long minute, not saying anything, then she gave him a very faint smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"The refinery is operating with more efficiency than usual," the supervisor boasted as they surveyed the busy laborers below. "There hasn't been so much as a minor problem in four days. That's a record for the station."

"You've done great work at Terok Nor, Tabor," Damar praised. "The Intendant is sure to notice the aplomb with which you run this facility."

B'Elanna didn't say anything. She was too busy trying to restrain her outrage at the dismal working conditions she saw below them. Tabor, her Tabor, had grown up in such conditions and fought hard to free his people. How could he now conspire to treat the Terrans the same way?

_He's not Tabor, B'Elanna. _How many times was going to have to chastise herself for a similar thought?

"We're going to bring Tuvok in now," Damar explained, "and then the Sub-regent will make her selection."

There was a flash of red light and a brief low-pitched alarm, signaling that the main doors to the facility were about to open. The entrance door rolled aside, and two Klingons from the ship marched in with Tuvok between them. Gowron was close at their heels.

"Tuvok," Tabor pronounced, regarding him crisply. "I guess you couldn't stay away." He turned to face Damar. "If I have to take him, he'd better be on his best behavior. Pledge your allegiance to the Alliance."

Tuvok stroked his goatee and gave a throaty laugh. "I do not need you to remind me of my loyalties."

Tabor didn't like this answer. "I don't like you, Tuvok," Tabor growled, "and I don't trust you. You do your job, keep the Intendant happy, and you and I can work together. But you keep showing insolence, and you and I are going to take another trip to one of the reengineering clinics."

Tuvok laughed again, and Tabor struck him across the face.

B'Elanna was fed up. She nodded at Gowron, who got between the two men. "We made a deal with the Intendant, Tabor," he growled. "Leave him alone."

Tabor peered closely at B'Elanna, dissatisfied with the way she'd made him look subservient in front of Tuvok. Under his gaze B'Elanna was transported back to elementary school. She felt herself recoiling on instinct, wishing there was some way to hide her forehead and its noxious ridges.

"What exactly are you?" he wanted to know.

"She is the sub-regent," Damar intervened. "I suggest you show some respect."

* * *

One minute Harry was eating his soup, which was just water with salt, and the next there was the familiar sound of a shuttle humming overhead. It fired toward the guard stations first and then at the force field generators.

Harry kept his cool, mentally following the plan he'd scrambled to outline with the prisoners that morning. They quickly abandoned their lunches and ran toward the work carts. They loaded their arms with as many rocks as they could hold, as improvised weapons, and then dashed in the direction of the guards.

The shuttle hovered overhead, still firing its phasers and doing its best not to hit any prisoners. There was an electrostatic flash as the its phasers managed to break a hole in the force field surrounding the camp. Then the rear hatch slowly unfolded, even though the craft was still several meters off the ground.

"Let's go!" Harry yelled at the top of his lungs. The crowd of raggedy, weak prisoners ran as fast as they could toward the opening in the force field. Harry ran half-backwards, hurling rocks over his shoulder at the approaching Cardassians. He hit one on the arm, causing him to miss a shot at a woman running by.

He kept his pace toward the opening in the force field, even as he saw Harry One fall to the ground a few meters away, but seeing Chakotay standing still, transfixed by the image of the shuttle, made him stop. "Chakotay! Let's go!"

"There's only one," he said, more to himself than to Harry. "There was supposed to be an entire fleet."

"It doesn't matter now," Harry urged. "Let's get out of here!"

Chakotay didn't respond. Harry reluctantly moved toward him and spotted a Cardassian pointing his phaser rifle in their direction. "Look out!" Harry yelled, shoving Chakotay out of the line of fire. He got to his feet as the Cardassian fired a second shot, this time hitting Chakotay squarely.

He took off running as fast as he could.

As the phaser fire flew from all directions, the prisoners began scattering – most, toward the awaiting shuttle, but a few to launch a suicide attack on the Cardassians out of revenge for their captivity. As Harry sprinted for the shuttle, he noticed Annika was coming up on his left. Without thinking he took her hand and pulled her along. They were close to the shuttle when Annika tugged on his hand, forcing him to stop moving.

"Harry," she whispered.

"I know, I'm sorry," he said, "but we can mourn for him after we get in the shuttle. The Alliance is going to retake the camp any minute now."

"No, Harry, I just wanted to say –" Annika pulled him swiftly toward her, crushing his body against hers as her mouth descended on his. This time Harry's tongue was a little quicker to respond, and they kissed for a few seconds, but in the midst of the chaos swirling around them it felt like an eternity. "Your kissing's really improved," she teased with a smile.

Still a little stunned, it took Harry a moment to process what had happened. In that second he saw a phaser beam hit Annika in the back, and she fell forward into the dirt, her body limp and lifeless.

The shuttle gave a mighty whoosh sound as the anti-grav thrusters kicked in, and it began to rise again without closing the hatch. Harry ran the last few meters and dove forward into the shuttle, landing on the deck on his stomach.

As it began to take off, he turned around to see who remained. Tom was close by. "Hurry!" he encouraged, extending his hand out to help Tom in.

Tom heard the phaser fire behind him and turned around to look. The Cardassians were approaching rapidly, and in a moment the shuttle would be too high for Tom to get in. "Jump," he urged. "I'll help you in."

Tom looked back and forth between Harry and the guards, and then turned around sharply, raising his hands in surrender. "Don't shoot!" he called to the guards. "I'm sorry!"

That was all Harry heard before he triggered the hatch closed.

_

* * *

He's not here,_ B'Elanna thought unhappily as she surveyed the assembled workers at the Terok Nor ore processing facility. There were dozens of Terrans, a few Vulcans, and even a Bolian – but no Harry Kim. She looked with some unhappiness at Gowron.

"You have to take three," he encouraged quietly. "They're expecting it."

The only familiar faces were Tabor, the sadistic overseer, and Tuvok, the turncoat. Damar had given her pictures of several rebel leaders to look for, but she didn't see any of them – to both their chagrin. She spotted a frail man among the throngs of prisoners. "Him."

Gowron glared at her. "May I speak to you privately, Sub-regent?"

B'Elanna nodded gloomily, and they were escorted into a small private antechamber, where she knew Gowron was going to talk her out of rescuing the old man.

He wasted no time. "That man's fate is sealed. No one will believe you really want him for employment. You're going to have to pick someone else – someone stronger."

"How am I supposed to do this?" she demanded angrily. "You're asking me to choose who will get to live, knowing that the others are going to die?" She threw up her hands. "What kind of world is this?"

"It's one we're trying to change," Gowron reminded her softly. Though he was as headstrong as Damar, B'Elanna had noticed Gowron's methods tended to be less abrasive, as if he genuinely wanted to recruit her to their cause. She was beginning to appreciate his mentorship. "I suggest you play along if you don't want to end up like that prisoner. Do I have to remind you that you're half-Terran? Without a powerful army behind you, you'd be processing ore just like them. It is the law."

Not for the first time she'd begun this misbegotten odyssey, B'Elanna wanted to cry – or throw something. Instead she sighed with resignation, and Gowron escorted her back to the main facility. With little fanfare, they selected three random workers and then headed back to the ship.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Harry moved to the front of the shuttle to get a report from whoever was in charge. To his great surprise, he saw Captain Janeway's counterpart hovering over a balding man's shoulder as they read a sensor display.

With a smile on his face, Harry was just about to greet her when she turned to look at him sharply. "You." Her eyes burned with fury. "We got you instead. He'd better not be dead – or I'll hold you personally responsible."

It took Harry a moment to realize what she was saying. "No, I'm not Harry – I mean, I am, but I'm not the Harry you think, Captain."

The slip of using her rank caused her turn around to look at him again, this time with curiosity. "Captain?" she repeated, trying the word out. Then she turned to the man, and they started laughing. "I didn't know I'd gotten a promotion, _General_."

"General Barclay," he said with a grin, "I like the sound of that."

"So if you're not Harry Kim," the captain's counterpart said, "you mind telling me who you are, Commander? And where Admiral Chakotay is?"

Harry sighed. They clearly held him responsible for their friend's – _Death? Maybe the weapon was set on stun. Maybe he's still alive down there._ He had to push aside that thought in order to determine how to answer. He wondered if he should tell the truth. Wasn't there some kind of danger of polluting their timeline or altering the balance of their universe if he admitted who he really was?

Then again, they weren't very fond of Harry One. Maybe they'd like H2 better.

Harry felt the familiar tug of an ethical dilemma, each side pulling him in the opposite direction, just as his older cousins used to fight over him when they chose teams for volleyball. "Harry's on my team," Harper would say, yanking on the left, to which Lee would argue, "No, we want him!" as he grasped Harry's right arm. Harry, only seven or so, would stand between them, slightly worried they were going to tear his arms off. It was the same thing now. Something told him to play the role of his counterpart until he could escape, in order to prevent influencing their world. But he felt something else pulling at him, arguing that he should tell them the truth. They might know how he got to their universe, and if not, at least they'd understand why he couldn't get involved in their conflict with the Alliance.

_Or maybe_, he thought, _I should get involved._ After all, he was on the rebel craft heading back to one of their hideouts. If the Cardassians or Klingons found him, they'd assume he was part of the group anyway. He might as well participate.

And they deserved his help. They were humans, just like him, only unlike him they hadn't grown up in peace and comfort. They lived in a universe in which they were slaves. Didn't he have a moral obligation to help them? Did Starfleet's commitment to noninterference extend as far as turning a blind eye to injustice?

He was certain the Prime Directive was never intended for that.

"Well, Major?" Kathryn prompted, her hands on her hips just like the Captain Janeway he knew and loved.

"It's not Major. I'm Ensign Harry Kim of the Federation starship Voyager," he explained patiently, ready to answer the questions that would inevitably follow.

* * *

As they materialized on the surface of Aldebaran, B'Elanna squinted into the harsh sunlight. She heard the guards calling the prisoners to line up for her inspection and felt her heart beginning to race with anticipation.

But as she and Damar stepped into the camp and heard the force field reactivate behind them, she scanned the line of prisoners and was dismayed that she didn't see the familiar solid body topped with raven hair. Once again, Harry wasn't where they had hoped to find him.

She looked to Damar for an answer.

He knew immediately what she was asking him, but he just shrugged.

Their intelligence had again failed them. B'Elanna wondered if they'd find the rebel leaders the Obsidian Order swore were there, or if the mission would compare in success to their previous trip to Terok Nor.

"You promised me he was here," she muttered through clenched teeth so the others wouldn't hear. "What kind of intelligence network do you have?"

"One that's keeping you alive." Damar flashed his sick smile at her.

B'Elanna turned her back to the others so she could speak more candidly. "This is the second place we've been to, Damar."

"The border patrollers are supposed to bring detainees to Terok Nor. Obviously, they didn't take your friend there. Sometimes they sell them here. This was the next logical place to look for him. But don't worry. There are plenty of rebels here for us to recruit. This is where they send the worst of them."

One of the prison guards stepped forward, hesitant to interrupt but clearly desiring to offer information. "Our apologies for the lackluster crop, Sub-regent," he said, "but the rebels raided the camp yesterday. Twenty prisoners managed to escape in the few minutes the force field was down."

B'Elanna was only half-listening as one of the prisoners caught her eye. "Tom? Tom Paris?"

"I think she's talking to you, Nick," Chakotay said, noticing the careful way the blond man avoided looking over at the woman who was calling out.

The arrangement Damar had made with the guards was to buy ten prisoners. And this time, B'Elanna resolved, she was not going to be talked out of her choices. With Tom ignoring her, she started at the other end of the line. "You," she said to an old man with weathered skin and a crown of frizzed gray hair.

"Please, Sub-regent, she is my wife."

"Do not speak to the Sub-regent!" the Andorian shouted, jabbing the old man in the ribs with his phaser rifle.

"Hey, hey, hey, take it easy." She steered the old man gently out of line by the elbow and nodded for the wife to follow. "They'll be more productive workers without you threatening them every five minutes," she castigated the Andorian. As she moved down the line, she claimed six others, reserving her last two choices for Tom and Chakotay.

"I'm not going with you," Chakotay said defiantly. Somehow B'Elanna didn't expect anything less from him.

"Sub-regent," the Andorian warned, "he's a known leader in the Terran Rebellion. He's not worth your money."

"All the better for our purposes," Damar insisted. "Once we get him on our side, the rest of the Terrans will fall in line."

"That will never happen," Chakotay nearly spat.

"Yes, it will," Damar reiterated.

B'Elanna took a step forward, pretending to inspect him. He looked so strange without his tattoo. "Trust me," she hissed in his ear. Then louder, "And him." She pointed now to Tom and turned away too abruptly to see the terrified look on his face.

* * *

"All right, Mister Computer Genius," Kathryn said, leading him to the back of the shuttle. Harry had quickly learned that she had the authority and strength of Captain Janeway, but her attitude was stuck on Janeway-without-coffee. He missed the captain's sense of humor, her optimism, the reassuring way she'd touch him on the shoulder during a shift on the bridge. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't like this Kathryn. She pulled back a ratty curtain to reveal a workspace with contraband computer equipment. "Since you say you're so talented, you're going to help us. Reg and Zimm think they have an idea for creating an army of holographic soldiers to help us turn the tide against the Alliance."

"Ah, you're just in time," Zimm announced, striding over to them.

He looked and sounded like the Doctor, but what little hair he had was unkempt. And instead of a reassuring Starfleet medical uniform, he was wearing a plum and emerald combination that was too tight in the midsection and too long in the sleeves. He kept pushing the cuffs over his wrists, and they kept sliding down again.

"We're ready to bring them online," he explained. He lifted his arm up ceremoniously, then frowned and paused to push up his sleeve, raised his arm again, and with flourish brought his index finger down to the console and hit the activation button. The room suddenly filled with holograms, every single one of them a replica of Zimm.

Kathryn covered her mouth with her hand to hide her surprise.

"Zimm," Reg said, examining the nearest photonic man, "why you'd program them all to look like you?"

"What was I supposed to program him to look like?"

"Zimm, if all the holographic soldiers look alike," Kathryn reminded him, "the Alliance will know immediately they're not real."

"And if they know they're not real," Reg continued, "then they'll start targeting the real fighters."

"Maybe not." The three turned to look at Harry. "When I was in the camp, none of the guards seemed to notice that there were two of me."

"You think all Terrans look the same to the Cardassians?" Reg asked.

"That may be," Kathryn said, "but how hard could it be to give them new appearances?"

"Kathryn," Zimm groaned, "I'd have to reprogram each one. It'll take hours."

"You could create an algorithm that tells the computer to randomly select from a pool of options," Harry began. He stopped himself. _Noninterference, Harry. Way to go._

Reg latched onto the idea. "Yes – we give four or five options for hair color, height, skin tone that the computer can choose from, and write that subroutine into the program for all the soldiers."

"Good," Kathryn declared authoritatively. There was something in her eyes that told Harry she had no idea what she was approving. "Reg, get on it. Harry, you help."

"I'm sorry," he said a little timidly. "I can't."

"You don't know how?"

"No, I – it's a rule."

Kathryn gave him a long look, something equivalent to what B'Elanna once called Captain Janeway's "glare of doom" – a name she thought was funny because it sounded like something from Tom's movie collection.

_Where the hell is B'Elanna?_

"Reg, can you do it?"

"I think so, Kathryn." He smoothed his hair over his bald spot. "It's going to be hard."

"It'd be a whole lot easier if the visiting professor here pitched in."

It was hard to miss the ice in Kathryn's voice. Harry ran a hand through his thick hair and moved to stand face to face with her. "I'm sorry I can't get involved. We have really strict rules about that where I come from." She gave him a contemptuous glare. "I can understand how it must seem to you. It's not that I don't care or that I don't want you to succeed."

"How wonderful of you."

"Look, Kathryn where I come from, you – well, the other you – she's the one who would insist I follow the rule. It's called the Prime Directive, and it means we don't interfere in the development of other societies, except under certain circumstances."

Kathryn blindsided him with a punch straight across the jaw. Then she spit on the floor. "That's what I think of your Prime Directive." As Harry rubbed his jaw – fortunately, it didn't feel broken or dislocated, though he knew there'd be a huge bruise – Kathryn picked up a phaser and pointed it at him. "Now, are you going to help us with the holograms or not?"

"Kathryn!" Reg yelled in surprise.

"Put the phaser down!" Zimm added.

"Stay out of this," she warned them both, her eyes trained on Harry. "Well, what's it going to be?"

"No," Harry said forcefully. "You'll have to kill me if that's how you feel about it. I cannot and will not help you."

"Space him." Kathryn pocketed the phaser and walked away from them.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

B'Elanna waited until everyone had gone to the mess hall for dinner – rumor had it there was a barrel of bloodwine on board – and then made her way to Tom's cabin. As she stood outside his door, her finger on the control for the door lock, she contemplated what she was really doing. Her mind echoed the same refrain it had been singing for the past few days: _he's not Tom, he's not Tom_. And yet she still felt compelled.

Tom looked stunned when she walked in, and rightly so. It would have been more appropriate to have the guards bring him to her chamber if she wanted to see him. She entered the room, consciously trying to look casual, as he watched her in silence.

"Sit down," she suggested gently. After a moment she sat beside him, and it wasn't hard to notice how he stiffened at her presence. "Tom, what have you heard about me?"

"Uhh…"

"It's okay, really. You can be honest with me."

"Chakotay said that you're half-Terran because your mother forced your father to have sex with her."

"Oh."

"Not that I think it's your fault, Sub-regent," he quickly amended.

"I'm not the sub-regent, Tom," she confessed quickly, without thinking.

"What?" Tom looked at her in surprise. As she looked into his eyes, B'Elanna wanted to believe she could confide in him, and the whole story came gushing out in one long breath.

"I'm not from here. I was asked to take over for the B'Elanna of this universe. My parents – they were married. They loved each other. Well, at least for a little while. It's not unheard of where I come from for someone to get involved with a person from a different species."

"Like you and me?" he interrupted knowingly. "There must be a reason why you came here tonight."

B'Elanna silently agreed but wasn't sure she could identify what it was. She held his gaze and hoped she would find the answer. After a moment, Tom lowered his eyes to his lap.

"Are you going to force me?"

The question came out quietly, a plea that she would say no. "Tom, no," she whispered, reflexively placing a hand on his knee.

He flinched.

"I'm sorry." She withdrew her hand. "I didn't mean – I wasn't…" She licked her lips. "In my universe you and I – we're…we're close."

"A Klingon and a Terran?"

"Yes," B'Elanna assured him with a nod. "Klingons, Vulcans, Terrans, Bajorans, Bolians. We all live and work on the same ship. It's called Voyager."

Tom relaxed slightly. "It sounds like the vision that guy had."

"Which guy?" she asked with mild curiosity.

"Um, he wasn't the ringleader, but he looked exactly like him." Tom thought for a moment, and B'Elanna hoped he would say the one name she most wanted to hear. "The blonde called him…H2…Half a Harry."

"Harry? You met Harry at the camp? What happened to him?"

"He's from your ship, isn't he?" Tom realized. "He told me he and I were friends in your universe. He escaped when the rebels attacked. He tried to help me."

"What happened?"

Tom stared at his hands in his lap. "I told him to go without me and gave myself up to the Cardassians."

The way he confessed to her was so familiar – like Tom trading confidences with her in the darkness of his quarters late at night. "You gave yourself up so they could get away?" she finished.

"No," he clarified. "Sub-regent –"

"B'Elanna."

"I'm not the Tom you and Harry know, okay? I didn't do anything brave. I saw the guards, and I got scared. I was scared of what might have happened if I had gone with the rebels. I don't think I'm cut out to live on the run like that."

His voice was sad, as if he felt burdened by his own lack of self-worth, as if he knew he was disappointing her but unable to do anything about it. She knew then he was not her Tom. Her Tom would never have willingly missed a chance to get away just because he was frightened. But something about this Tom's confession – the trust he placed in her, the way he needed her to understand what had really happened and not think him braver than he really was – made him endearing.

B'Elanna leaned toward him and placed a tender kiss on his cheek. Then she moved back to gauge his reaction. He was staring at her in surprise, but he didn't look afraid of her anymore. "I'm going to need your help," she said, circumventing any explanation of her actions and sparing him further torture of confession. "Will you help me look for Harry?"

"I don't know where the rebels were going," he warned. "I really don't know anything about them at all."

B'Elanna frowned. "Did you hear them say anything at all? Anything about a base or their next mission?"

Tom shook his head. "I'm really sorry."

B'Elanna rose and placed her hands on her hips. _Maybe we can ask Chakotay,_ she thought. Thus far, he hadn't been cooperative, even when she and Gowron had attempted in veiled hints to indicate it was safe to trust them. If Tom had information, it would make everything much simpler. "Come with me," she said after a moment.

She led him down through the empty corridors of the ship to her ready room, where she pulled up a star chart of the surrounding sector. "Look carefully," she prompted. "Does anything ring a bell?"

Tom studied the chart for a minute with a thoughtful expression on his face. "The Betreka Nebula. There's something about that name."

"Apparently it's a popular place." She nearly activated the comm – until she remembered that Tom was still in the room. Damar and Gowron, she knew, would scold her if they saw him there. The guards would be easier; she could tell them she was trying to extract information from him – which, really, she was. "I'm going to have one of the guards escort you back to your room now, okay?"

"Is everything all right?" he asked with some nervousness.

"It's fine. You were really helpful." She gave him a reassuring smile. "Now I just need you to promise me that you'll pretend to be loyal in front of the Alliance soldiers. Can you do that?"

Tom smirked wryly. "Be obedient? That I can do."

"Don't hate yourself," she urged. Part of her felt tenderly toward him in spite of disapproving his complicity. _It's not his fault. He doesn't know any better._ Her own counterpart, after all, participated in the very system that excluded her. _If I grew up here, I'd probably be the same – no, I wouldn't. I'd be the head of the Terran Rebellion by now._ She was mildly relieved to know that part of Chakotay existed in this universe, too.

"I didn't expect you to be kind to me."

"I'm not being kind, Tom. I'm just…it's just how people are supposed to be treated."

* * *

"We have a big problem," B'Elanna explained to Gowron and Damar as they entered her ready room. She could tell by their red-rimmed eyes that the rumor about the bloodwine had been accurate. She hoped it wouldn't interfere with their ability to offer counsel. "I found out where Harry Kim is, but if we go after him, we'll be leading the Alliance right to the rebels."

"Then you'll have to continue the mission without him," Damar said immediately.

She glared, but it was Gowron who spoke, haranguing Damar for not even considering what B'Elanna was saying. She could see how their relationship worked, how they played off each other's strengths and weaknesses, and she was grateful that, on this one particular issue at least, Gowron was on her side. He would not let Damar summarily dismiss any chances of finding Harry.

They continued to debate the pros and cons of leading the ship into the nebula to find the rebel base. Although their ship was under the control of the Obsidian Order, which was sympathetic to the Terran Rebellion, not all the crew members knew that, and someone could turn over the information about the base whereabouts to the Alliance. In the end, however, they decided to go. It would provide them cover to make preparations for the strike against Martok. Meeting with the rebels would also give Damar a chance to determine if they could be trusted to enter a partnership without betraying the ship to the Alliance. And B'Elanna would be reunited with her crewmate.

* * *

"So you actually stole his clothes while he was bathing?" B'Elanna repeated with wide eyes.

"I didn't do it," Tom reiterated. "My sister did. I would never steal from a Klingon!" They shared a laugh. "She couldn't help it. They'd taken away everything we had, and I really needed a pair of pants."

"What did he do when he finished swimming?"

"My other sister said she saw him walking back to camp naked. I was so nervous that I was going to get caught wearing those pants that I made them use hela berries to dye the fabric."

They laughed again. It turned out that this Tom had as many interesting stories about his adolescence as her Tom. It felt good to listen to them, away from the impending plans to betray the Terran rebels, away from Damar and Gowron – to just _be_ for a while.

They were lounging on his tiny bed, half-sitting, half-reclining.

"You really shouldn't keep coming here."

"I made sure no one saw." She didn't want to say it aloud to Tom, but she suspected that, if the crew saw her entering his room, they would just assume an affinity for Terrans ran in her family.

She held up the pitcher of bloodwine – she was beginning to acquire a taste for it – and refilled their glasses. _Is this number two or number three? _ She had no idea how long they'd been talking.

"When I was little," she confessed with a smile, "I used to get in trouble with my teachers every day. There was this one, Miss Johnston, who was the kind of person who always carried around a stack of padds and consulted them for everything. Getting groceries, teaching class – she even made notes about what we did at recess. She made it her life's work to give me a hard time, too, and she never believed me when I told her the other kids were picking on me."

"The kids picked on you?"

B'Elanna was still smiling, though they were heading into dangerous territory. "Because I was half-Klingon. They were all fully human."

Tom nodded in response, though she knew he couldn't really fathom a world in which being Klingon was a detriment. "So what did you do to her?" he prompted, trying to restore the light mood.

"Well, one day, when everyone was at recess, I took her padds. When we came back to class, Miss Johnston started looking everywhere for them. She had us turn the room upside down trying to find them. She had absolutely no idea what to do with us. We spent the rest of the day playing games because she couldn't even think of what to teach without the damn lesson plans."

Tom smiled, but there was some other thought in his eyes. "What?" she pressed.

"I wish I'd known you then," he said softly.

Time stood still. They were the same words her Tom had said, not too long ago, words that she could tell he, like this Tom, truly meant. Words that made her believe she didn't have to spend her life under the protective covering of anger. "Why?"

"You'd have inspired me," he explained. "I wouldn't be such a…so _content_ to be second-class. You'd have made me want more for my life."

"Are you sure it's too late?" Their heads had come dangerously close, and B'Elanna's body began acting apart from her brain. She leaned up slightly, drinking in the sight of his face mere centimeters from hers. Their lips met and pressed together tentatively at first, then parted as the kiss deepened.

_He kisses like Tom._

_He's not Tom._

_This is a bad idea, B'Elanna._

She pulled away, somewhat reluctantly, but leaned her forehead against his as she caught her breath. She understood now the reason why she had come to his cabin, and she knew it was wrong. "I should get back to the bridge," she said quietly, setting her bloodwine on the table. "They'll be expecting me."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

The planetoid in the Betreka Nebula housed far more members of the Terran Rebellion than Harry had expected, given the paltry turnout for the Aldebaran liberation campaign. There was a veritable complex of hastily constructed shelters serving as housing units and work spaces. In the center of the complex was a grassy field that the rebels used as an informal gathering place, when it wasn't being used for a kind of sport Harry couldn't quite identify. It seemed to involve teams of five or six using large poles with curved baskets at the end to pass a ball back and forth. The strange sport aside, the rebel base wasn't a bad place at all – especially compared to his last two residences in this universe. In fact, the members of the Terran Rebellion, while zealous, were rather easy to get along with.

Excepting Kathryn and her unending quest to recruit him into her band of merry engineers. Presently he was in one of the structures that served as the computer lab for the development of the holographic army. Yesterday they'd enjoyed a minor success: with some pains Reg and Zimm had created several different options for physical parameters, which the program for each soldier would randomly select. The holographic soldiers no longer looked like Zimm and instead were a wide range of humans, with varying heights, weights, and eye, hair, and skin color. That had pleased Kathryn greatly, and as Harry had quickly learned, when Kathryn was happy, everyone was happy.

Today, however, they weren't having much luck with the creation of the portable projectors, and Kathryn's mood was at the other end of the spectrum. She was short and caustic in her remarks to Reg and Zimm. Toward Harry, who was still refusing to participate but wasn't allowed to leave the lab, she was utterly malicious. He no longer thought her earlier threat of sending him out an airlock was an empty one.

He watched with some interest as Reg and Zimm sifted through the problem with a third human, a female with shoulder-length auburn hair whose name he hadn't been told. They faced a considerable challenge. The holoemitters with which he was familiar always operated synchronously; if a hologram moved across a space and out of range of one emitter, it would remain solid because another emitter would take over. Creating a unidirectional portable version was difficult, and ensuring that it would operate under unknown conditions was even more of a challenge.

And, Harry realized, they were approaching the situation backward. They were trying to create emitters the Terrans could carry, which would project a hologram somewhere near them. What they needed, and what would solve the unidirectional problem, was something like the Doctor's mobile emitter, connected to the holograms themselves.

The woman suggested that they increase the strength of the optronic circuitry, and Harry shook his head. The three were competent enough – clever, really, to have created the holographic army with so little access to technology – but they were clearly out of their element. Once again he felt pulled between conscience of duty and conscience of morality.

Reg made a few adjustments to the prototype emitter, and then reinitialized the projection. A short blonde woman with blue eyes appeared, shimmered a few times, and then disappeared as the prototype made a hiss and pop, and Reg dropped it.

"You overloaded the circuitry," Harry said.

The three engineers looked at him.

Harry rose from his stool with a sigh, knowing which side had finally won the tug of war. Avoiding Kathryn's stare, he picked up the damaged prototype. "It's going to need a power flow regulator so that it doesn't overload. That's going to make it about a kilo heavier, but if you adjust it to be carried as a backpack, rather than worn as a wristband, it should still be manageable. But it means the holograms will be projected behind the real soldiers, not in front. Of course, we could transport a few of these ahead of the army and bring them online remotely, so that it appears we've transported soldiers down when all we've really done is activated the holograms. That way, when the real soldiers arrive with the backpacks, they won't be on the front lines."

When he was finished, he dared to look at Kathryn. She now reminded him of the captain, smiling at him with a look of pride in her eyes. He had made her happy.

Unfortunately, that was as much as he was able to contribute to their plans. Before he could suggest how they proceed, the complex sounded with an alert, and the five of them ran out of the lab toward the central field. "Incoming Alliance ship!" someone warned.

"Reg, Zimm, hide the computer equipment!" Kathryn barked.

People began scrambling from one structure to another, and Harry saw several older people hurried away from the complex all together, presumably to some hidden location where they would be safe. Suddenly several figures, the unmistakable outlines of Klingons and Cardassians, materialized in the field, and then chaos erupted.

Before Harry could find cover, he felt the familiar tingle of a transporter taking his body apart molecule by molecule.

The Klingons and the Cardassians were right behind him. Once relative calm was reestablished throughout the camp, the rebels took stock of the damage that had been done in the swift raid on their base: virtually none.

"They found us, took Harry, and left," Reg summed up. He slowly turned toward Kathryn, the only conclusion dawning on them at the same moment.

"They came for him," Kathryn said grimly.

Reg nodded with displeasure. "Harry Kim is a collaborator."

* * *

"Harry!" There was sheer delight in B'Elanna's voice as she watched him materialize on the transporter pad. She hugged him fiercely before she realized that the sub-regent should probably not be seen embracing a lowly Terran.

"A cousin from her father's side of the family," Gowron explained to the Andorian, who was looking on scornfully.

"How nice."

"Now that you've had your reunion," Gowron said authoritatively to Harry, "get to the Terran quarters. And don't forget that your place is to serve the sub-regent."

Harry looked at B'Elanna, but she just nodded as if to tell him she'd explain later. With some confusion he allowed the Andorian with one antenna to lead him down the corridor, away from B'Elanna, and into a small room with a bed and a chair and not much else. Before the door closed, he called out, "What's going on?"

The Andorian paused in the doorway, considering for a moment. "You were working against the Alliance," he declared venomously. "You turned your back on your own cousin. And now we're going to make all your friends pay."

Then he stepped into the corridor, and the doors closed behind Harry, followed by the sound of a lock being engaged.

* * *

"He is a known enemy of the Alliance!" the Andorian grumbled. He looked at B'Elanna beseechingly. "How am I supposed to keep you safe if we surround ourselves with untrustworthy Terrans? I'm only trying to protect you, Sub-regent." His blue hand tentatively fingered the stump of his lobbed-off antenna, perhaps to remind B'Elanna of the extent of his loyalty.

"By turning the rebels, we'll be ensuring our own position," she reminded him.

"Why did we attack that base, only to get him?" one of the Klingons asked. "We should have captured them all!"

"That man is a dishonorable traitor!"

"No, he's not," Damar swiftly intervened. "The sub-regent sent him to infiltrate the Terran Rebellion in order to feed us information."

"Why didn't you tell us this in the first place?" one of the Cardassians asked skeptically.

"The sub-regent doesn't have to explain herself to you!" Gowron bellowed.

"When we dismantle the Rebellion," Damar continued, "Martok will have no choice but to surrender to us. The Regent will declare us heroes."

B'Elanna's head was spinning faster than Damar could weave tales. _Cardassians are awfully good at telling lies,_ she observed – something to file away in her memory.

As Damar and Gowron continued with what could only loosely be termed a staff briefing, B'Elanna stopped listening. She concentrated instead on what she remembered from the Sacajawea's sensor readings six days earlier and tried to hypothesize what kind of technology Damar could possess that would get her and Harry home. _Maybe they found a Borg transwarp conduit? That doesn't explaining how we entered a parallel universe, though. _The last time she'd examined Damar's personal database in the ship's computer, she had found several security trips that would alert him if anyone was trying to decrypt his access code, much less actually succeeding at doing so. _A few more days, _she reminded herself. _We launch the assault on Martok, and then I'm done here. Or sooner if Harry can help me get around the encryption protocols._

Something Damar said caught her attention, and she tuned into what he was explaining to the crew. "Why do you think we didn't kill everyone at the base or take them prisoner? Because we're going to use them to gather information, and then we're going to take down the entire Terran Rebellion. No more skirmishes. This time we will eradicate the infestation. We will restore power and glory to the Alliance."

This last line evinced a few cheers from the Klingons and the more effusive Cardassians.

B'Elanna was fuming. _Surely he's lying. He can't really mean we're going to attack the rebel base. That wouldn't serve his mission._

She would have to wait until they were alone to talk to him about it. For now she excused herself from the group to tell Harry as much about their upside-down mission as she understood.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"Tom, what are you doing out of your room?"

He looked like a small child being caught stealing a cookie before dinner. "I…I thought you were all on the bridge," Tom answered feebly.

"Everyone else is," B'Elanna told him, "but they could come down here at any time. Do you know what the Andorian will do if he catches you roaming the ship? He'll assume you're a rebel spy."

"Oh."

"What were you doing, anyway?" B'Elanna asked with curiosity. "Weren't you scared to leave your room?"

Tom grinned sheepishly, and his face turned pink. "I was looking for the bathroom. There isn't one in my room."

B'Elanna laughed in response to this, and she led him down the corridor. "Next time, use the comm panel to call me, okay? I'll have someone escort you."

"There's no comm panel in my room either."

B'Elanna couldn't help smiling. "So I guess life here isn't that much better than Aldebaran."

"I wouldn't say that," he replied, sharing her smile. "I might not be able to relieve myself whenever I want to, but the food's a lot better." His eyes penetrated hers, and she found herself looking away with mild embarrassment. "And you're a much more benevolent captor."

They stopped in front of a small, unmarked door. "Here we are."

Tom leaned on the door frame, still smiling at her. "Are you going to wait here to make sure I go back to my room without staging a prison break?"

To B'Elanna's delight, he didn't seem to be afraid of her anymore. In fact, he seemed…

_He's flirting, _she realized. _And he's just like Tom when he does it._

She leaned against the wall of the corridor, contemplating this, as he went into the bathroom. He'd come a long way from the man who nearly cried when she first tried to speak with him. When he reemerged a minute later, she gave him a winning smile as a prize for his budding confidence.

"You look pretty happy," Tom observed. "The raid must have gone well."

"Actually, I don't know about that. No one was hurt, and we got Harry back, but I think we might have to stage an attack now to help the propaganda machine."

"Harry," he repeated, "your friend, right?"

"Mm-hmm. Want to meet him?" She stopped in front of a door a few down from his and entered the command sequence to open the lock. "Harry?" she called as they stepped in.

"Hey, B'Elanna, what the – Tom? What are you doing here!"

"For the hundredth time," Tom said, "I am not your Tom. And you're not Harry."

"Well, I am, but I'm the one who kept telling you different species ought to be able to live together in peace, not the one who wanted to get you all killed."

"Then I guess we're all acquainted," B'Elanna said with a forced smile, feeling not unlike the hostess of a party with a poorly planned guest list.

Fortunately, Harry was all business. "B'Elanna, are they going back to the base?" She nodded. "There are a lot of good people there. Isn't there some way we can throw the Klingons and the Cardassians off?"

"This ship has a lot of good people, Harry," she replied. "The Obsidian Order – if you can believe this – is trying to reform the Alliance. They hate the idea of interrupting the rebels as much as we do, but if they don't, there are going to be too many questions by people on the ship we can't trust. And when word gets out that they located a rebel base and left it alone, no one will take them seriously when they try to claim power in the sector. They'll be discredited as traitors."

"Why are they being so secretive?" Harry asked. "If they want to reform the Alliance, why can't they just tell everyone their intentions?"

"Because they would be killed," Tom explained.

Harry looked at him for a brief moment before returning to his line of questioning of B'Elanna. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"They want me to assume power as some kind of political figure because I'm Klingon."

Harry shook his head and let out a little breath. "B'Elanna, we're not supposed to get involved –"

"Don't lecture me, Harry," she snapped. "It's not as if I had a lot of choice. The Cardassian, Damar, promised me access to technology that would get us home if I cooperated. Besides, you were working with the Terran Rebellion!"

"I held out as long as possible. The captain even threatened to execute me!"

"The captain?"

Harry nodded. "She's a leader in the Rebellion. They were creating a holographic army – the Doctor's creator…Zimmerman, and this other strange man. But they couldn't get the portable emitters to function, and I refused to help them until right before you arrived."

"What were they doing wrong?"

"They couldn't get the power cells to last long enough. Once the holographic soldiers came online, they would start blinking in and out after a few minutes."

"How did they design the emitters?"

"Backpacks to be carried by the rebels."

"They were trying to project around themselves? They should have been thinking about an emitter attached to the holograms, not the people."

"That's exactly what I was going to suggest to them when you came."

B'Elanna realized Tom looked bored by all the technobabble. "Well, we have to raid the camp, Harry. We don't have a choice."

"B'Elanna," he said gently, "I don't mean to question your decisions, but have you tried getting access to Damar's technology without his help?"

She shot him a cold look. "What do you think I've been doing every spare minute I've had, Harry? Drinking kenar and singing songs about the glory of Kahless?"

"Sorry."

"His personal database is encrypted, and I've been trying not to call attention to the fact that I'm trying to break into it." She was only partially mollified by his apology. "I could really use some help." Slowly, very slowly, something occurred to her – something she'd been too distracted by flirtation to see earlier. "Tom, how exactly did you get out of your room?"

"Uh…"

She turned to Harry to explain. "Just now, I found him roaming the corridor alone, even though he was supposed to be locked in his room."

"I was told Aldebaran was where they took the worst offenders," Harry remembered. He turned to Tom. "Were you really at that camp because the Klingons raided your home?"

"I wasn't part of the Terran Rebellion," Tom avowed, looking quickly between them. "I meant what I said about heroes getting killed."

"But?" B'Elanna prompted. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a look that said it was time to fess up.

"My sisters had been teaching me how to override electronic locks. They broke into a food warehouse because we were hungry. I was just the lookout."

"But you learned what they taught you," B'Elanna finished. Tom's eyes cast downward guiltily. "What made you decide to risk trying to see what you've learned today?"

Tom bit his lip. "I guess – I guess because of you."

She knew Harry was swiftly drawing conclusions about what had been going on in his absence. "All right," she said summarily, "you two will work on Damar's database together while I try to keep the damage to the rebel base to a minimum. Harry, are you ready to look over our sensor readings to show us where we should hit?"

"Can I get a shower first?" Harry asked unexpectedly. B'Elanna took a good look at him: his ordinarily lustrous hair was slick with grease, his face was dirty, and he smelled. It was hard to notice at first – on a ship full of Cardassians and Klingons, she'd become accustomed to stench – but Harry probably hadn't had access to proper facilities since their arrival. She also noticed he was favoring his left side.

"Are you all right?"

"Seska's guards got a little rough with me. I guess all the running around has made it flare up again."

She wanted to ask what "a little rough" meant, but she could probably guess. While she'd been riding around her own ship as the queen of the alternate universe, Harry had been beaten and left in unsanitary conditions. She wished they could have traded places or that she could have rescued him earlier, to spare him the pain. She knew he'd never complain about it.

"I guess I'm the hall monitor today," she said with a forced smile. "Come on, I'll show you to the bathroom."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

The "attack" on the rebel base had been planned. They would strike at morning, when most of the rebels would be off collecting supplies or leading small air strikes and raids. They would hit a structure Harry knew was empty. If everything went according to plan, no one would get hurt, but they would give the impression of condemning the rebels for acting against the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance.

When the details were ironed out, Harry asked to be dismissed. It had been days since he'd slept in a real bed or had any privacy. He was eager to return to his tiny room for the night.

B'Elanna knew she could use the rest, too, but there was one more "prisoner" with whom she needed to clear the air before she would be able to sleep. Chakotay had been brought to the strategy session but had staunchly refused to provide them with any information. One of the Klingons had managed to hit him once in the torso before Gowron and B'Elanna both ordered him to stop. Gowron gave a speech about the dishonor of harming someone who was unable to fight back, and B'Elanna reminded them all that their mission was to convert the Terrans into accepting her as a leader, not to alienate them. She wasn't entirely certain the guards were convinced, but at least they'd left Chakotay alone. He had been taken back to his quarters by the Andorian whose name she still didn't know.

And so it was that she was standing outside Chakotay's room, ready to try to talk to him. She rationalized that she just wanted him to understand that they were the good guys and that she supported his cause, but she knew it was more than that. Even if he wasn't _her_ Chakotay, he was still _Chakotay_, and she was still trying to win his approval just as she had when she'd first joined his cell in the Maquis. There was something about the way he had accepted her unconditionally, trusting in her talents and even advocating on her behalf to Captain Janeway. Chakotay was, in some ways, the first real friend she'd ever had. She couldn't stand the thought of him hating her in any universe.

Their meeting didn't go off well. He stood erect, chest puffed out proudly. "No matter what you do to me, you can't stop the Terrans from seeking their independence."

"I'm not going to _do_ anything to you," she repeated with some exhaustion. "I just came here to tell you that you've got the wrong idea about us."

He ran a hand across his solar plexus in reminder of the blow he'd taken earlier and laughed. "I'm pretty sure my ideas about you are accurate."

"I'm not your enemy, Chakotay."

He sneered at her – a look B'Elanna had never seen on her Chakotay's face. "You are the product of a vulgar practice of the Klingons, and as far as I'm concerned, you've been tainted by their blood. You're worse than they are. At least Klingons don't try to befriend us. But you – living halfway between two worlds – you're contemptible. You're a Terran gone wrong, and if we ever do take control over the Alliance, I'm going to make sure people like you are the first ones we get rid of."

Her hand came up and struck him across the cheek before she even realized what had happened, and then she was out of his room in a flash. In the corridor she paused for a moment to catch her breath. As she leaned against the bulkhead, panting slightly, she felt tears stinging her eyes.

* * *

Moral quandaries were something Starfleet prepared its officers for. Harry Kim couldn't even tally the number of classes he'd taken with "ethics" either in the course title or somewhere on the syllabus. There had been an entire class devoted to application of the Prime Directive, both philosophically and historically; Modern Federation Ethics; Early Starfleet History, in which the class debated whether Starfleet had historically adhered to its own tenets; and, a class he'd thoroughly enjoyed, Morality in the Twenty-Fourth Century.

With all this training Harry understood the situation at hand. The Obsidian Order – _Are they really a revolutionary organization in this universe?_ It made his head spin – needed B'Elanna to take power as their puppet. In order to do that convincingly, they needed everyone else in the sector to think B'Elanna was a force to be reckoned with. It wouldn't look good to have her find a location for the Terran Rebellion, take one person, and leave suddenly. To play the part convincingly, she had to command her people to strike the base – even if that meant they were attacking Terrans who were on the same side as the Obsidian Order.

He'd told Gowron and Damar as much information about the base as he could, given that he'd only been there a short time, and it mildly relieved his conscience that the attack was going to be staged in such a way so that no one ought to get hurt. Of course, the practical side of him, the side that had been in space for four years, knew that these things rarely went according to plan. Still, based on the target and the time of day they'd chosen, he had hopes that there would be no casualties.

_Casualty. Such an ugly word for what it really means. It sounds as if someone's death is a casual thing._

Although Harry understood the position B'Elanna was in, he was beginning to wonder if she wasn't letting her power go to her head a little. He'd seen her snap at her crew and lash out at Gowron – in fairness, it was all behavior he'd seen from her before, but this time it wasn't because she was trying to get Voyager repaired quickly. She seem fixated on her ascension to power, and even though she said she'd been trying to break into Damar's database, Harry couldn't help doubting her efforts – and feeling guilty about his doubt.

He fleetingly considered mutiny, but he knew it was not a real option. There weren't enough people to pull it off. The Klingons might be willing to overthrow the "mongrel," but they wouldn't rally behind a Terran mutineer. Tom and maybe even the Andorian would follow him, and probably the other prisoners for the sake of freedom, but then Damar and Gowron would be left with the mess of trying to decide whether to "discipline" them or reveal their true identities.

For the moment Harry had to let B'Elanna take the reins. And he wasn't entirely comfortable with that arrangement.

_She's your friend, and she's never lied to you. Are you going to stop trusting her now?_

If this universe could break the bond between them and cause them to turn their suspicions on each other, what chance did they have of getting out of it?

Harry closed his eyes and hoped that in the morning the situation would seem a little less gray.

* * *

At 0800 that morning, in a tiny room lit only with a faint red light in a corner, Harry sat down to breakfast with the Andorian with one antenna (he'd have to remember to ask B'Elanna about that), Tom, and Chakotay. The four of them didn't speak to each other. The Andorian felt himself above the others, and so did Chakotay; Tom was generally reticent, except, it seemed, in B'Elanna's presence, and Harry was too anxious about the impending strike.

At 0815 the Andorian dabbed his blue mouth with his napkin and then tossed it onto the table. "Back to your rooms, Terrans," he announced.

They were being herded down the corridor when the ship rocked violently. Chakotay took the opportunity to shove the Andorian against the bulkhead. The Andorian hastened to his feet and tried valiantly to keep his three charges under control, but Chakotay was a loose cannon, and Harry a seasoned Starfleet officer. It only took a minute before they had him subdued, silently asking Tom to guard him. Tom gave them an urgent "Go!" in response.

They ran in opposite directions: Chakotay toward the escape pods, and Harry toward the bridge.

* * *

There was chaos as the bridge crew tried to manage the attack. B'Elanna caught herself against a console as they took another hit, mentally clucking her tongue at the crew's lack of discipline. The Cardassians seemed flummoxed by the rebels' unorthodox attack pattern, and the Klingons were roaring, ready to blow the small rebel craft to pieces with their superior firepower. Damar and Gowron were having a hell of a time corralling them.

"Nobody blows up that ship until I say so!" B'Elanna hollered over the din.

"They're hailing," a Klingon announced.

The doors to the bridge opened, admitting Harry, just as the viewscreen activated to reveal the face of Kathryn Janeway.

"Captain, what are you doing?" B'Elanna sputtered. "Kathryn."

But her attention was focused on Harry. "This is payback for betraying us, Harry. Fire."

The ship was hit again, but it was little more than an annoyance to B'Elanna's crew.

"Get her off the screen!" Gowron ordered.

Harry and B'Elanna exchanged another look. This was the distraction they needed. Harry slipped into B'Elanna's ready room while the rest of the bridge was glued to either their consoles or the viewscreen.

"Fire on that ship!" Gowron yelled at the weapons officer. "Now!"

Before B'Elanna could protest Gowron's order, there was another round of weapons fire, and then more ruckus as a Cardassian patroller positioned itself between the two ships. One of the Klingons tried to tell them he saw it on sensors over the noise of the red alert, but by that time they were all staring at it on the viewscreen.

"What's going on?" Tom yelled above the din as he stumbled onto the bridge.

"It's Seska!" one of the Cardassians cried in surprise.

B'Elanna shoved Tom in the direction of the ready room and hurried over to Damar. "Did she come to help us?"

The bridge crew realized simultaneously that Seska's weapons weren't trained on the rebels.

"Someone has launched an escape pod," one of the Klingons reported.

"Seska's hailing."

Before the viewscreen was fully activated, they could hear Seska was calling out, "You are harboring known enemies of the Alliance. Stand down."

B'Elanna looked with concern at Damar and Gowron. If Seska was aware that the ship was under the control of the Obsidian Order, they were all doomed.

Damar leaned forward, his gray fingers gripping the nearest console tightly. "We have arrested those enemies," he replied menacingly. "And we are on our way to make certain their entire base of operations is destroyed. This is the sub-regent's ship. I suggest it is you who should stand down – or be arrested for treason."

_Nothing like a little chest thumping when you're backed into a corner,_ B'Elanna thought, holding her breath while she awaited Seska's response. The viewscreen went dark.

"The Cardassians are moving off," one of the Klingons reported, just as another announced, "The rebel ship is moving away."

"Follow that ship!" Gowron ordered, though it was unclear which he meant.

It didn't matter. Both ships jumped to warp speed.

B'Elanna could hear Damar sigh from across the bridge. "Stand down red alert." It was difficult to miss the annoyance in his voice.

* * *

"You'd better get out of here," B'Elanna warned as she strode into her ready room. "Damar and Gowron are probably going to come in to strategize any minute."

"Tom got me through the security lockouts," Harry reported.

"You're sure you didn't trip any alarms?"

"Positive," Tom said, flashing her a confident smile.

"We still have to decrypt the database," Harry continued. "Do you have a padd I can download it to? I can work on it in my room."

B'Elanna looked around for a moment and then tossed one to him. As Harry copied the information, a console beeped. They looked at each other in alarm.

"Tom, you said you were sure –"

"It's a message," he cut her off. "It's from Seska's ship."

Harry moved beside him. "It's being routed through an auxiliary database," he told B'Elanna. "She must have sent it during the attack."

"What does it say?"

Tom looked up at her in surprise. "'Don't trust Damar. He won't let you go home.'"


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

"We thought you were dead!" Kathryn declared with relief as Chakotay stepped out of the escape pod.

"How did you find me?"

"We have our sources."

"Actually," Reg began to explain, but Kathryn silenced him with a look.

"Nice work at Aldebaran."

Kathryn beamed. "Wait until you see what we've been working on. Reg and Zimm have come up with a way for us to generate holographic soldiers so that the next time we raid a camp, the guards will target them instead of us. We figure our casualties will be cut in half."

"Only the Alliance might know about the plan now that –" Reg was once again silenced by Kathryn's glare.

"That's great," Chakotay said flatly, clearly not paying attention. "Listen, Kathryn, our next attack isn't going to be a camp. We're going to attack that ship again – with an entire fleet."

"Why?"

"Remember Harry Kim?"

"Which one?" she asked, her lips set in a thin line.

"You met him?"

"He was here. They attacked, took him, and left. Reg thinks he's a collaborator."

Chakotay wet his lips, thinking of the very neat motive Reg had inadvertently laid out before them. They could seek revenge on Harry Kim, and, if all went well, procure a new ship for themselves.

And more importantly, they'd have a chance to face Sub-regent B'Elanna. Chakotay wasn't certain what her story was. She'd seemed reasonable enough when they had spoken – not like a typical hotheaded Klingon. He knew he hadn't really given her a chance, but there was something so abominable about her existence and her usurpation of her mother's power that he found himself unable to think beyond his own prejudice. She had Terran blood, yet she chose to live among the Klingons and claim power in a system that oppressed her own people. She was disgusting. No, worse – she was dangerous. She was a threat to everything they were fighting for. She had to be stopped.

"Kathryn," he said, interrupting her from once again prattling on about what they'd been up to in his absence, "rally the troops. We're going to assassinate the sub-regent."

* * *

Harry was studying the decryption algorithm laid out in front of him with narrowed eyes. It was going on hour three of his new project, and he hadn't had much luck yet. He heard noise in the corridor and quickly stowed the padd under his mattress and scrambled to his feet.

"Dinner, Terran," the Andorian announced. He grabbed Harry by the arm, much more forcefully than was necessary, and hustled him into the corridor where Tom was standing beside an old man and woman. Since the incident earlier that morning, the Andorian's disposition had grown decidedly more frigid toward them all.

They marched in silence to the hot gray dining room and sat down. With Chakotay gone, Harry and Tom found themselves at a table alone together.

"How's it going?" Tom asked carefully as one of the Klingons shoved a plate of food in front of him.

Harry looked down at his meal. It was a definite step up from the fish soup on Aldebaran. At least here they tried to duplicate Terran cuisine. Presently he was sitting in front of a plate of some kind of meat and a huge piece of bread. There was a large dish of green vegetables on the table between him and Tom and plenty of water to drink.

"It's going," Harry answered evenly.

"Look, I've met a lot of Cardassians in my life," Tom continued quietly. "I'm telling you, Damar can't be trusted."

"I agree with you," Harry said back in a hushed voice. "Seska and B'Elanna agree with you. What do you propose we do about it?"

"Earlier, when I heard the two of you talking, you sounded like you knew a lot about computers."

Harry smiled. "B'Elanna's the chief engineer on Voyager, and I'm in charge of starship operations."

"What does that mean?"

"It means we know a lot about computers."

"But you're still having trouble with the database?"

"These things take time."

"Let me help you."

Harry speared the green vegetable with his fork and ate a bite. "Do you know anything about decoding?"

"Well, no, but…"

"You know what will happen if we get caught, right?"

Tom nodded solemnly. "Look, I know I didn't make the best impression on you back on Aldebaran, but being around you and B'Elanna…something in me is changing. I need to be a part of this. Please."

Harry gave him a smile. He sounded like Tom, desperately wheedling Captain Janeway to let him take a shuttle on some ill-conceived mission. "You like B'Elanna, don't you?" Tom didn't answer, but his face turned slightly red. "It's okay to admit it."

"I've just never met anyone like her before."

Harry smiled. "I know what you mean."

"Why aren't you eating dinner with her, anyway?"

"She has to keep up the game," Harry explained. "She's eating with him and the rest of the crew, and she's going to come find me later to see what I've learned."

"What have you learned?"

"Not much, but I bet it'll go faster once you start helping."

Tom grinned eagerly. "So you'll let me?"

Harry nodded. "If you can get to my room after dinner, once the guards have gone."

"That I can definitely do."

* * *

Several decks up, B'Elanna was having a much less enjoyable dinner with Gowron and Damar. In front of her was a plate of slimy worms, large chunks of meat, and a kind of pudding that looked as though it was made out of blood and intestines. From what animal, she didn't want to know. She'd pulled Gowron aside to ask if she could please be served something more palatable, but he'd only responded by calling her by a few Klingon pejoratives. Sub-regents, he reminded her, don't eat weak Terran food.

There was, fortunately, plenty of bloodwine, which she drank with gusto, matching Gowron gulp for gulp in the hopes that the noises her stomachs were making would quiet if she put something, even liquid, into them.

The bloodwine had loosened everyone's inhibitions. The Cardassians were being more forthrightly devious, and the Klingons had grown considerably louder. Damar had allowed his mask of nonchalance to slip. Underneath he was visibly perturbed by the earlier incident with Seska.

"Do we have reason to suspect she's not loyal to the Alliance?" B'Elanna asked, enunciating her words carefully. She hadn't told them about the message she'd received, and she didn't want to blurt it out as a result of too much bloodwine.

"I don't know," Damar admitted. "I thought for certain she supported the Alliance, but the way she threatened us, I'm not sure."

"Maybe she was really attacking because she knows the true nature of our mission," Gowron suggested pointedly.

"If that's the case, then why didn't her ship attack the rebel base?" Damar argued.

"Why aren't _we_ attacking it right now?" Gowron growled. "Why are we sitting here having dinner?"

"What happened to the escape pod Chakotay was in?" B'Elanna chimed in with a slight hiccup. She caught herself, pursing her lips together in embarrassment, and set her drink down.

"If Seska took Chakotay," Damar hypothesized, "then that means she's really on our side. Of course, she could have been pretending to be on our side to throw the rebels off track."

"It seems to me that you've lost control of this situation," Gowron snarled at him. They didn't exactly seem to be on the same team anymore, B'Elanna had noticed. And she couldn't really blame Gowron. "Do you have any idea who we can trust?"

* * *

"Harry, what's a multidimensional transporter?" Tom asked.

"A what?"

"A multidimensional transporter," Tom repeated.

"Where? Let me see." Harry nearly ripped the data padd from Tom's hand and studied it. "Oh..."

"What? What is it?"

"This can transport matter across quantum realities," Harry explained. "It could transport B'Elanna and me back to our universe. I guess we would be close to Federation space, so we could finally tell Starfleet what happened to Voyager." He tapped a few commands on the padd. "I'm going to send this to B'Elanna's personal database, so we can access the specifications."

"You have to take me with you."

"Tom, I can't promise that," Harry answered automatically. "There are rules – "

"I'm standing in the middle of a Klingon ship helping you steal information from a Cardassian," Tom snapped. "You owe me!"

"We'll see," Harry replied evenly. He paused for a moment, examining the transporter schematics. "Tom, this transporter only has a standard range."

"What does that mean?"

"That means that they couldn't have transported us sixty thousand light-years. Something else must have caused our shuttle to travel halfway across the galaxy. Did you read anything in there about spatial anomalies? Or a species called the Borg? Let's see what other tricks the Cardassians have up their sleeves."

He and Tom worked side by side for a minute, searching through the records. The Obsidian Order, it seemed, had access to a wide variety of information that they were trying to keep secret. It was Tom who, on a lark, decided to access the propulsion files.

"Harry," he said slowly, holding the padd out as if it were contaminated, "I think we'd better get B'Elanna."

* * *

"We're under attack!" Gowron bellowed across the dining hall.

_The flashing red light and klaxon weren't enough of a signal,_ B'Elanna thought wryly as she hurried behind him in the direction of the bridge. She slid her hands along the bulkhead for support, hoping that it was the attack, not the bloodwine, that was making it hard for her to walk in a straight line.

"It's the Terrans again!" the Klingon at navigation announced to the command team.

"Tell them to stand down," Damar called across the frenzy. The ship rocked violently, sending them all tumbling to port, and like seasoned battle veterans they picked themselves up and immediately returned to work. "Put the sub-regent on screen! Have her –"

"Shields are down to sixty-eight percent," one of the Klingons called.

"Where did they get that kind of firepower?" B'Elanna demanded, her mind still thick and hazy from the bloodwine. "Damar, didn't you say they only had two standard phaser banks per craft?"

"Obviously they've done some upgrading since our last intelligence."

"Shields down to thirty-seven percent," the Klingon reported again. "They're aiming directly at our shield generators."

"Fire back!"

"Hang on, we've got an incoming vessel – it's Seska again!"

B'Elanna sank into the command chair, sensing already that the encore was not going to go quite as smoothly as the debut. She wished she had a station to attend; simply watching the others manage the crisis wasn't satisfying enough.

"Seska's hailing us."

"On screen!" Damar nearly cheered.

"I thought you could use some help."

B'Elanna blinked at the screen for a moment, certain that Seska was speaking directly to her. As the ship pitched again, their eyes remained locked.

"Shields are down!

"Sub-regent, we've got a transport in progress –" The Andorian stopped as the figures of Kathryn Janeway and Chakotay materialized directly in front of B'Elanna, who jumped to her feet.

"Where's Harry Kim?" Janeway demanded, pointing her disruptor rifle directly at B'Elanna's face.

"Stay away from the sub-regent!" the Klingon at the conn ordered. He rose from his seat and pushed himself in front of B'Elanna just as Janeway fired. The Klingon's body disintegrated before it hit the deck.

And B'Elanna was still staring down the disruptor. "What do you want with Harry?" she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

"He betrayed us," Janeway explained. "We don't take kindly to that."

"Consider yourselves prisoners of the New Terran Empire," Chakotay announced, circling the room with his own disruptor rifle in his hands. "If any of you makes a move, your sub-regent's dead."

"Empire?" Damar scoffed. "You have one vessel and a boarding party of two. Just what do you think is going to happen here?"

There was another swirl of a transport in progress, and B'Elanna used the distraction to knock Janeway in the stomach with the rifle. She brought the weapon up to strike Janeway's face and then wrestled it from her hands.

Suddenly Seska and three Cardassians were standing on the bridge, and Damar pulled a small hand phaser from his belt.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The air on the bridge was tense: B'Elanna had a disruptor pointed at Kathryn, Chakotay's was trained on B'Elanna, Seska's on Chakotay, and Damar's on Seska. Seska's guards were, for the moment, not aiming at anyone, and the rest of the bridge crew were on their feet, afraid to move, uncertain who had the fastest trigger finger.

"Seska, what's going on?" Damar demanded.

"She must have found out we're with the Obsidian Order," one of the Cardassians said in a panic.

"Obsidian Order!" another cried. "You traitors!"

"Shut up, all of you!" Kathryn ordered.

"I found out, all right," Seska said, her eyes not wavering from her weapon on Chakotay. "I found out there's a lot more to Damar than he's been telling anyone."

"Damar, what is this?" Gowron hissed.

The door to the bridge rolled open noisily, but no one gave in to the impulse to turn toward it. Out of the corner of her eye B'Elanna saw Harry take a few hesitant steps forward. "He's been lying to you, Gowron," Harry announced. "He's been lying to all of you."

In a flash Chakotay had retrained his weapon on Harry, but Seska's guards all swiftly drew their weapons toward him.

* * *

"Where am I?" Tom demanded as he looked around the dingy craft onto which he had rematerialized.

"That's a fine thank you," Reg said. "I'm Reginald Barclay, the Chief General of the Army of the New Terran Empire. You have me to thank you for your rescue."

"I have no idea what you just said," Tom said, hurrying toward him, "but you've got to get me back onto that ship. B'Elanna might be in trouble."

Reg buffed a fingernail on the sleeve of his shirt. "She's probably already dead, if I know Kathryn. And Chakotay will take over the ship – after he kills Harry, of course."

"What are you talking about?" Tom demanded. Before he knew what he was doing, he was gripping the collar of Reg's shirt, shaking him. "Get me back to that ship."

"Whose side are you on, anyway? I would have thought you'd be a little more grateful to be rescued from the Alliance."

"They're not the Alliance!" Tom shouted into Reg's face. "They're the Obsidian Order, and they're trying to bring the Alliance down! They're the good guys!"

Reg's eyes widened slightly. "You have to be mistaken. Why would Chakotay have us attack an Obsidian Order ship?"

"Why did you attack at all?" Tom asked. He let go of Reg's collar and took a step back to give them both some breathing room. "How many of you are there, anyway?"

"Seven."

"And you thought you could take that whole ship?" Reg looked down. "I've been living there for a few days now. I'm not even allowed to go to the bathroom without three people knowing about it. There's no way seven of you could take that ship. Can you communicate with them?" Reg nodded. "You have to call them off. Who's your leader?"

When Reg hesitated for a nanosecond, Tom grabbed his shirt again and gave him a violent shake. "What was your mission?"

"Chakotay ordered us to assassinate the sub-regent," Reg choked out.

"Call Chakotay and tell him to stop!" Tom screamed wildly. "Now!"

"Who are you?" Reg managed to gasp as the fabric of his shirt cinched around his neck.

"Somebody who's changed a lot in the last few days."

* * *

With Chakotay's weapon no longer pointed at her, B'Elanna took the opportunity to look around the standstill bridge. Everyone was waiting to make a move, perhaps waiting to find out if what Harry said would cause them to change sides. "Go on, Harry," she urged.

"Tom and I managed to access Damar's personal database," he explained. "The Obsidian Order knows of a way to get us back to our reality. It's called a multidimensional transporter. It's something they learned about from the Terran Rebellion."

"I told you I would give you the technology once we defeated Martok," Damar reminded B'Elanna.

Gowron chanced to take a few heavy steps toward him. "But you never told _me_ anything about a transporter!"

"There's more," Harry interrupted. "The Cardassians have been experimenting with new propulsion technology. They're trying to expand their territory. They're going to take over the galaxy – without the Klingons. They've been lying to you."

"Is that true, Damar?" Gowron growled. He swiftly withdrew his _d'k tagh_ knife from his belt.

"The Obsidian Order isn't dedicated to reforming the Alliance," Harry continued. "They're dedicated to helping the Cardassians. They don't care about the Terrans – and they'll break the Alliance at the first chance they get."

"Do you have any proof of this?" Damar challenged.

"He has proof, Damar," Seska said threateningly. "I've got their shuttle."

"B'Elanna, remember the displacement wave? It's a form of ship transport they've been experimenting with," Harry explained. "To get ships across greater distances faster. It was only supposed to send a ship a thousand light-years, but something went wrong. And they didn't know was that it had an inverse effect. Instead of sending a ship out, it pulled one back." Harry looked at Damar. "That's why you thought it was a failure at first. Until you heard about the two Terrans with a strange shuttle Seska had taken into custody."

"So it pulled us sixty thousand light-years," B'Elanna restated as she watched Kathryn carefully, "but how did we get into a different universe?"

"They didn't factor in the quantum signature of the wave," Harry answered. "There was a slight variance as it crested, and it pulled us across dimensions."

"You're saying the Cardassians are the reason you ended up here?" Kathryn clarified.

"Yes," Harry said emphatically. "And my guess is that they won't stop until they've perfected the technology and taken over the galaxy. Without the Klingons."

Damar looked like a man who had just watched his ice cream fall off the cone and onto the sidewalk. Gowron gave a great bellow and swiftly stabbed him in the gut. As Damar's eyes widened in surprise, Gowron thrust the knife upward into his thoracic cavity, and Damar slumped to the deck, his blood spilling everywhere.

Chakotay turned to B'Elanna in confusion. "You thought you were helping the Rebellion?"

"That's what I tried to tell you!"

"And you," he growled at Seska, "how long until you double-crossed us?"

"Oh, please, you were planning to double-cross me the first chance you got." She gestured around the bridge with her weapon. "I sold you to the Aldebaran guards just like I promised you, Chakotay, so you could lead your rebellion from inside. And him –" She waved the weapon in Harry's direction. "I sold him there so he would be saved by your rebellion. I let B'Elanna stay in the transporter buffer because she had Klingon lifesigns. I'd say I've been a little more loyal to the cause of Terran liberation than you have."

"Chakotay," Kathryn said with quiet horror, "you were selling us out to the Cardassians?"

Ignoring her, Chakotay said coldly, "We have a lot of unfinished business between us, Seska." He turned his weapon on her and fired. Seska gave a strangled moan as her body disintegrated.

"Put your weapon down!" B'Elanna cried.

Chakotay held up his hands in surrender, but suddenly there was the swirl of Tom Paris' body assembling molecule by molecule right over the pool of blood that was spurting from Damar's gaping torso. All hell broke loose as Tom materialized. He slipped slightly in the slick blood as he tried to take a step toward B'Elanna. A round of fire ensued in panic, and B'Elanna shoved Kathryn to the deck without thinking, covering Kathryn's body with her own.

When it was quiet again a moment later, she tentatively rose to her feet and offered Kathryn a hand, ignoring the bewildered look on her face. They surveyed the damaged bridge.

Harry, Gowron, and the Andorian were still standing.

The Cardassians and the other Klingons were gone.

So were Tom and Chakotay.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

The sight of the Sacajawea parked in the shuttle bay of Seska's ship almost brought a tear to Harry's eye; he didn't think he had ever seen a more beautiful spacecraft in his entire life. And this after the hull had been rumpled by the displacement wave.

He turned to Gowron and the two Cardassians who had accompanied them and gave a nod of thanks. He suspected B'Elanna wanted a moment to say goodbye to Gowron in private, so he entered the shuttlecraft wordlessly. Then he began working on the calculations for the displacement wave that would, hopefully, send him and B'Elanna home. It was a complicated procedure that involved inverting the calculations the Cardassians had used to bring them there, hopefully with the right quantum resonance signature to land them in the right universe and not in the Delta Quadrant of this universe or another one. They had wanted to remain in the Alpha Quadrant of their universe, though it would mean leaving their friends on Voyager behind, because duty to the ship had to come first; in the Alpha Quadrant, they could alert Starfleet of the ship's disappearance and begin working on a way to bring it home. But the technology the Cardassians used had proved far too unstable in the few, quick simulations they had run. There was no way to make the wave miniscule enough to transport them to a different universe without also pushing them across vast distances of space.

Inside the shuttle Harry noticed, for the first time, that Federation ships had a certain smell to them. He'd never paid attention before, but there it was – something clean and cool, the smell of duritantium and Starfleet's recycled air content – and Harry knew instinctively that Voyager smelled the same way. As he took a seat at the helm, he burst into a smile. He couldn't wait to get back to Voyager, take a sonic shower, and sit in his quarters, just smelling the familiar surroundings all night long.

* * *

"I'm sorry I won't be with you to take on Martok," B'Elanna said with a slight frown. "I know it's dishonorable to break a promise, but –"

Gowron waved a hand, silencing her. "Given this new information about the Cardassians, I think we have other concerns for the moment than who's controlling one small sector of space. I'm going back to the homeworld so we can strategize."

"You want my advice? I'd trust the humans over the Cardassians any day. It works in my universe."

Gowron smiled, bearing his pointed teeth at her. "I'm sorry your friends died."

"Yeah," B'Elanna said quietly, staring at the deckplate, "me too." Kathryn was still alive, and she'd vowed to return to the rebel base and share the news about the Obsidian Order, but Tom and Chakotay were gone. Even the Seska of this universe, who had redeemed her counterpart with her trustworthiness, was dead. At Chakotay's hand – B'Elanna thought the universes were conspiring with irony.

In some ways, she knew, it was easier this way. She and Harry didn't have to leave Tom behind. And he'd had a chance to show, in the final minutes of his life, that he was, indeed, a hero.

And to prove his theory that heroes always end up dead.

"I should go," she said, wanting very much to turn her attention away from Tom and Chakotay and everything that had happened. She looked over at the Cardassians. "Thanks for keeping the shuttle in one piece."

They nodded, and with one last look at Gowron, B'Elanna turned to enter the Sacajawea.

"Ensign," she called with false bravado, "do you have those calculations ready for me?"

Harry shook his head as he handed her a data padd. "I knew the power would go to your head."

B'Elanna flashed him a smile as she took a seat to review the padd. After a few minutes she looked up. "There's no guarantee this will work."

Harry nodded in confirmation. "But we have to try."

"Agreed." She turned her attention to the helm controls. "Initiating pre-flight sequence."

A minute later they were moving off in space, out of the Betreka Nebula and away from the Terran rebels and Obsidian Order, away from the events of the past week.

"I'm ready to initiate the wave," Harry reported. They turned to each other, and in their silent eye contact a pledge was made. They were going to die trying to get back to their universe if that was what it took, and success or failure, they'd do it together.

Harry's slender fingers danced across the controls for a moment, and then both watched out the forward viewport as space in front of them rippled and danced.

"I'm detecting an increase in ions in the area," B'Elanna reported on cue.

"Approaching the front of the wave," Harry counted down, "in three, two…"

Their shuttle tossed violently like a kite in a thunderstorm.

* * *

When they were finally able to pick themselves up from the floor, B'Elanna was the first to confirm that they were, in fact, back in the Delta Quadrant.

"In which universe?" Harry asked, only half-joking.

Her triumphant smile was answer enough. "I've got Voyager on long-range sensors. At maximum warp we can reach them in four hours."

They settled in as the shuttle's autonavigation began leading them toward the ship that had become home. B'Elanna reclined against her seat, arms crossed over her chest, eyes closed, while Harry took his turn monitoring their course.

"I'm not going on any more away missions with you, Maquis," he teased.

Truth be told, B'Elanna was ready to agree to never going on another away mission, period. But she couldn't let him get away with making it her fault they always had bad luck. "Why not?" she asked innocently.

"Let's see. The first time I met you, we were being held prisoner and experimented on. The next time we went on a mission, I ended up dead. And then there was the time I died when the hull breached, and then, as if I'm not lucky enough to be here, my own duplicate, I almost got my head cut off on a mission to a fantasy world. And this time I met my duplicate again –"

"And he'd actually managed to get Seven of Nine," B'Elanna interrupted.

"Until he died, too," Harry finished. He recognized the shift in his voice from joking to jaded. He made a slight course correction, collecting himself, before he said lightly, "One of these days, you and I are going to get onto a shuttle and crash on a planet somewhere and not be able to leave again, ever. And with our luck, it'll be some Bronze Age civilization without any technology or medicine."

B'Elanna watched him working the controls for a moment, thinking how lucky he was to even be alive. He was right; he'd lived through too much on Voyager. And often as not, she was right beside him when whatever awful thing happened. "You're starting to sound as cynical as Tom, Starfleet," she warned. "And for the record, I think you've gotten into as many scrapes with him as you have me."

"For the record," Harry said, a slight smile appearing on his lips, "you might be right."

B'Elanna smiled, too, at his reaction. "Face it, Harry. You have lousy taste in friends."

He turned to look at her then, his face looking a whole lot sweeter. "I'm sorry about Tom, B'Elanna."

For a moment she didn't know what he meant. Spotting Voyager on sensors had put the thought of her Tom Paris, the one who loved her and was going to be very, very excited to have her return, at the forefront of her mind. Then it registered.

"Me too. I'm sorry about Chakotay – Kathryn – all of them. And Seska!" She nearly laughed. "Who would believe that Seska was, for once, actually on the right side?"

"I don't know if I'd go that far," Harry said. "She let those guards do a pretty good number on me. Cardassians and Klingons killing Terrans, Terrans taking up arms against the Cardassians and Klingons," Harry muttered quietly as he worked. "Cardassians turning on each other, turning on the Klingons. There's a chance that the Terran Rebellion will succeed, but how will it be any different than the Alliance? At some point, somebody has to put their weapon down."

"Yeah, but who wants to be the first?"

Harry frowned. "I don't know, but I hope somebody has the courage."

"To get his head blown off?"

"Maybe," Harry acknowledged. "But somebody else will see it, and maybe it will have a ripple effect."

They lapsed into silence for a minute, until B'Elanna said quietly, "Harry, let's not tell them, okay?"

He looked at her, and for a moment B'Elanna thought he was going to ask her to clarify. But then he nodded solemnly in understanding. They'd give the captain their official mission report, and they'd tell the rest of the senior officers where they had been and what they had done. But they weren't going into any details on what their friends' counterparts in the mirror universe had been up to – or what had happened to them.

"As far as they know," Harry agreed, "we never found them in the mirror universe."

B'Elanna nodded her consent to that story, and they lapsed into companionable silence as Voyager appeared as a blip on their short-range sensor readings and then, eventually, came into focus out the forward viewport.

**The End**

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_Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting, especially GLovesTrek and Sophiedoodle, two incredibly loyal reviewers._**  
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